B 


0  i ) 


: 


University  of  California  •  Berkeley 

Gift  of 
CHARLOTTE  AND  NORMAN  STROUSE 


Pippen'e  Book  Store 
Old  and  New  Books 

605  N.  Eutaw  St. 
Baltimore      •      -      Md 


ONE  HUNDRED  BEST  BOOKS 


Books  by 
JOHN  COWPER  POWYS 


"The  War  and  Culture,"  1914 $  .60 

"Visions  and  Revisions,"  Essays,  1915...  2.00 

"Wood  and  Stone,"  a  Romance,  1915 1.50 

"Confessions  of  Two  Brothers,"  1916....  1.50 
"  Wolf's-Bane,"  Rhymes,   1916 1.25 


In  Preparation 

Rodmoor,  a  Romance  $1.50 

Suspended  Judgments,  Essays   2.00 

PUBLISHED  BY 

G.  ARNOLD  SHAW 

GRAND  CENTRAL  TERMINAL 

NEW  YORK 


ONE  HUNDRED 
BEST  BOOKS 


WITH  COMMENTARY  AND 

AN  ESSAY  ON 

BOOKS   AND   READING 


BY 

JOHN  COWPER  POWYS 


1916 
G.  ARNOLD  SHAW 

NEW  YORK 


COPYRIGHT,  1916,  BY  G.   ARNOLD  SHAW 
COPYRIGHT  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  THE  COLONIES 


VAIL-BALLOU    COMPANY 

4TON  AND  NEW  YORK 


PREFACE 

This  selection  of  "  One  hundred  best  books  "  is  made 
after  a  different  method  and  with  a  different  purpose 
from  the  selections  already  in  existence.  Those  appar- 
ently are  designed  to  stuff  the  minds  of  young  persons 
with  an  accumulation  of  "  standard  learning  "  calculated 
to  alarm  and  discourage  the  boldest.  The  following  list 
is  frankly  subjective  in  its  choice;  being  indeed  the  selec- 
tion of  one  individual,  wandering  at  large  and  in  freedom 
through  these  "  realms  of  gold." 

The  compiler  holds  the  view  that  in  expressing  his  own 
predilection,  he  is  also  supplying  the  need  of  kindred 
minds;  minds  that  read  purely  for  the  pleasure  of  read- 
ing, and  have  no  sinister  wish  to  transform  themselves  by 
that  process  into  what  are  called  "  cultivated  persons/' 
The  compiler  feels  that  any  one  who  succeeds  in  reading, 
with  reasonable  receptivity,  the  books  in  this  list,  must 
become,  at  the  end,  a  person  with  whom  it  would  be  a 
delight  to  share  that  most  classic  of  all  pleasurable  arts  — 
the  art  of  intelligent  conversation. 


BOOKS  AND  READING 

There  is  scarcely  any  question,  the  sudden  explosion  of 
which  out  of  a  clear  sky,  excites  more  charming  perturba- 
tion in  the  mind  of  a  man  —  professionally,  as  they  say, 
"  of  letters  " —  than  the  question,  so  often  tossed  disdain- 
fully off  from  young  and  ardent  lips,  as  to  "what  one 
should  read,"  if  one  has  —  quite  strangely  and  accidentally 
—  read  hitherto  absolutely  nothing  at  all. 

To  secure  the  privilege  of  being  the  purveyor  of  spirit- 
ual germination  to  such  provocatively  virgin  soil,  is  for 
the  moment  so  entirely  exciting  that  all  the  great  stiff 
images  from  the  dusty  museum  of  "  standard  authors," 
seem  to  swim  in  a  sort  of  blurred  mist  before  our  eyes, 
and  even,  some  of  them  at  least,  to  nod  and  beckon  and 
put  out  their  tongues.  After  a  while,  however,  the  shock 
of  first  excitement  diminishing,  that  solemn  goblin  Re- 
sponsibility lifts  up  its  head,  and  though  we  bang  at  it 
and  shoo  it  away,  and  perhaps  lock  it  up,  the  pure  sweet 
pleasure  of  our  seductive  enterprise,  the  "  native  hue,"  as 
the  poet  says,  of  our  "  resolution  "  is  henceforth  "  sicklied 
o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought,"  and  the  fine  design 
robbed  of  its  freshest  dew. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  much  deeper  contemplations  and 
maturer  ponderings,  only  tend,  in  the  long  run,  to  bring 
us  back  to  our  original  starting-point.  It  is  just  this  very 
bugbear  of  Responsibility  which  in  the  consciences  and 
mouths  of  grown-up  persons  sends  the  bravest  of  our 
youth  post-haste  to  confusion  —  so  impinging  and  inexor- 

7 


8  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

able  are  the  thing's  portentous  horns.  It  is  indeed  after 
these  maturer  considerations  that  we  manage  to  hit  upon 
the  right  key  really  capable  of  impounding  the  obtrusive 
animal;  the  idea,  namely,  of  indicating  to  our  youthful 
questioner  the  importance  of  aesthetic  austerity  in  these 
regions  —  an  austerity  not  only  no  less  exclusive,  but  far 
more  exclusive  than  any  mandate  drawn  from  the  Deca- 
logue. 

The  necessary  matter,  in  other  words,  at  the  beginning 
of  such  a  tremendous  adventure  as  this  blowing  wind  into 
the  sails  of  a  newly  built  little  schooner,  or  sometimes 
even  of  a  poor  rain-soaked  harbor-rotten  brig,  bound  for 
the  Fortunate  Islands,  is  the  inspiration  of  the  right  mood, 
the  right  tone,  the  right  temper,  for  the  splendid  voyage. 
It  is  not  enough  simply  to  say  "  acquire  aesthetic  severity." 
With  spoils  so  inexhaustible  offered  to  us  on  every  side, 
some  more  definite  orientation  is  desirable.  Such  an 
orientation,  limiting  the  enormous  scope  of  the  enterprise, 
within  the  sphere  of  the  possible,  can  only  be  wisely  found 
in  a  person's  own  individual  taste ;  but  since  such  a  taste 
is,  obviously,  in  a  measure  "  acquired,"  the  compiler  of 
any  list  of  books  must  endeavor,  by  a  frank  and  almost 
shameless  assertion  of  his  taste,  to  rouse  to  a  divergent 
reciprocity  the  latent  taste,  still  embryotic,  perhaps,  and 
quite  inchoate,  of  the  young  person  anxious  to  make  some 
sort  of  a  start.  Such  a  neophyte  in  the  long  voyage  —  a 
voyage  not  without  its  reefs  and  shoals  —  will  be  much 
more  stirringly  provoked  to  steer  with  a  bold  firm  hand, 
even  by  the  angry  reaction  he  may  feel  from  such  sugges- 
tions, than  by  a  dull  academic  chart  —  professing  tedious 
judicial  impartiality  —  of  all  the  continents,  promontories, 
and  islands,  marked  on  the  official  map. 


ONE     HUNDRED    BEST     BOOKS 


One  does  not  trust  youth  enough,  that  is  in  short  what 
is  the  matter  with  our  educational  method,  in  this  part  of 
it,  at  least,  which  concerns  "  what  one  is  to  read."  One 
teases  oneself  too  much,  and  one's  infants,  too,  poor  dar- 
lings, with  what  might  be  called  the  "  scholastic-venera- 
tion-cult " ;  the  cult,  namely,  of  becoming  a  superior  per- 
son by  reading  the  best  authors.  It  comes  back,  after  all, 
to  what  your  young  person  emphatically  is,  in  himself, 
independent  of  all  this  acquiring.  If  he  has  the  respon- 
sive chord,  the  answering  vibration,  he  may  well  get  more 
imaginative  stimulus  from  reading  "  Alice  in  Wonder- 
land," than  from  all  the  Upanishads  and  Niebelungenlieds 
in  the  world.  It  is  a  matter  of  the  imagination,  and  to 
the  question  "  What  is  one  to  read  ?  "  the  best  reply  must 
always  be  the  most  personal :  "  Whatever  profoundly 
and  permanently  stimulates  your  imagination."  The 
list  of  books  which  follows  in  this  volume  constitutes  in 
itself,  in  the  mere  perusal  of  the  titles,  such  a  potential 
stimulation.  A  reader  who  demands,  for  instance,  why 
George  Eliot  is  omitted,  and  Oliver  Onions  included ;  why 
Sophocles  is  excluded  and  Catullus  admitted,  is  brought 
face  to  face  with  that  essential  right  of  personal  choice 
in  these  high  matters,  which  is  not  only  the  foundation  of 
all  thrilling  interest  in  literature,  but  the  very  ground  and 
soil  of  all-powerful  literary  creation.  The  secret  of  the 
art  of  literary  taste,  may  it  not  be  found  to  be  nothing 
else  than  the  secret  of  the  art  of  life  itself  —  I  mean  the 
capacity  for  discovering  the  real  fatality,  the  real  predes- 
tined direction  of  one's  intrinsic  nature  and  the  refusal, 
when  this  is  found,  to  waste  one's  energies  in  alien  paths 
and  irrelevant  junketings? 

A  list  of  books  of  the  kind  appended  here,  becomes,  by 


IO  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

the  very  reason  of  its  shameless  subjectivity,  a  challenge 
to  the  intelligence  perusing  it  —  a  challenge  that  is  bound, 
in  some  degree  or  another,  to  fling  such  a  reader  back 
upon  his  own  inveterate  prejudices ;  to  fling  him  back  upon 
them  with  a  sense  that  it  is  his  affair  reasonably  to  justify 
them. 

From  quite  another  point  of  view,  however,  might  the 
appended  list  find  its  excuse  —  I  mean  as  being  a  typical 
choice;  in  other  words,  the  natural  choice  of  a  certain 
particular  minority  of  minds,  who,  while  disagreeing  in 
most  essentials,  in  this  one  important  essential  find  them- 
selves in  singular  harmony.  And  this  minority  of  minds, 
of  minds  with  the  especial  prejudices  and  predilections 
indicated  in  this  list,  undoubtedly  has  a  real  and  definite 
existence;  there  are  such  people,  and  any  list  of  books 
which  they  made  would  exclude  the  writers  here  excluded, 
and  include  the  writers  here  included,  though  in  particular 
instances,  the  motives  of  the  choice  might  differ.  For 
purely  psychological  reasons  then  —  as  a  kind  of  human 
document  in  criticism,  shall  we  say?  —  such  a  list  comes 
to  have  its  value;  nor  can  the  value  be  anything  but  en- 
hanced by  the  obvious  fact  that  in  this  particular  com- 
pany there  are  several  quite  prominent  and  popular  writ- 
ers, both  ancient  and  modern,  signalized,  as  it  were,  if 
riot  penalized,  by  their  surprising  absence.  The  niches 
of  such  venerated  names  do  not  exactly  call  aloud  for 
occupancy,  for  they  are  emphatically  filled  by  less  popu- 
lar figures ;  but  they  manifest  a  sufficient  sense  of  incon- 
gruity to  give  the  reader's  critical  conscience  the  sort  of 
jolt  that  is  so  salutary  a  mental  stimulus.  A  further 
value  might  be  discovered  for  our  exclusive  catalogue,  in 
the  interest  of  noting  —  and  this  interest  might  well  ap- 


ONE     HUNDRED    BEST     BOOKS  II 

peal  to  those  who  would  themselves  have  selected  quite  a 
different  list  —  the  curious  way  certain  books  and  writers 
have  of  hanging  inevitably  together,  and  necessarily  im- 
plying one  another. 

Thus  it  appears  that  the  type  of  mind  —  it  would  be 
presumptuous  to  call  it  the  best  type  of  mind  —  which 
prefers  Euripides  to  Sophocles,  and  Heine  to  Schiller,  pre- 
fers also  Emily  Bronte  to  Charlotte  Bronte,  and  Oliver 
Onions  to  Compton  Mackenzie.  Given  the  mind  that  in 
compiling  such  a  list  would  at  once  drag  in  The'  Odyssey 
and  The  Psalms,  and  run  hastily  on  to  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  and  Charles  Lamb,  we  are  instinctively  conscious 
that  when  it  reaches,  with  its  arbitrary  divining  rod,  our 
own  unlucky  age,  it  will  skip  quite  lightly  over  Thackeray ; 
wave  an  ambiguous  hand  in  the  direction  of  Meredith, 
and  sit  solemnly  down  to  make  elaborate  mention  of  all 
the  published  works  of  Walter  Pater,  Thomas  Hardy  and 
Mr.  Henry  James. 

It  seems  to  me  that  nothing  is  more  necessary,  in  re- 
gard to  the  advice  to  be  given  to  young  and  ardent  people, 
in  the  matter  of  their  reading,  than  some  sort  of  com- 
munication of  the  idea  —  and  it  is  not  an  easy  idea  to 
convey  —  that  there  is  in  this  affair  a  subtle  fusion  desira- 
ble between  one's  natural  indestructible  prejudices,  and  a 
certain  high  authoritative  standard;  a  standard  which  we 
may  name,  for  want  of  a  better  word,  "  classical  taste," 
and  which  itself  is  the  resultant  amalgam  of  all  the  finest 
personal  reactions  of  all  the  finest  critical  senses,  win- 
nowed out,  as  it  were,  and  austerely  purged,  by  the  wash- 
ing of  the  waves  of  time.  It  will  be  found,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  that  this  latter  element  in  the  motives  of  our 
choice  works  as  a  rule  negatively  rather  than  positively, 


12  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

while  the  positive  and  active  force  in  our  appreciations 
remains,  as  it  ought  to  remain,  our  own  inviolable  and 
quite  personal  bias.  The  winnowed  taste  of  the  ages, 
acquired  by  us  as  a  sort  of  second  nature,  warns  us  what 
to  avoid,  while  our  own  nerves  and  palate,  stimulated  to 
an  ever  deepening  subtlety,  as  our  choice  narrows  itself 
down,  tells  us  what  passionately  and  spontaneously  we 
must  snatch  up  and  enjoy. 

It  will  be  noted  that  in  what  we  have  tried  to  indicate 
as  the  only  possible  starting-point  for  adventurous  criti- 
cism, there  has  been  a  constant  assumption  of  a  common 
ground  between  sensitive  people;  a  common  sensual  and 
psychic  language,  so  to  speak,  to  which  appeals  may  be 
made,  and  through  which  intelligent  tokens  may  be  ex- 
changed. This  common  ground  is  not  necessarily  —  one 
is  reluctant  to  introduce  metaphysical  speculation  —  any 
hidden  "  law  of  beauty  "  or  "  principle  of  spiritual  har- 
mony." It  is,  indeed,  as  far  as  we  can  ever  know  for 
certain,  only  "  objective  "  in  the  sense  of  being  essentially 
human ;  in  the  sense,  that  is,  of  being  something  that  in- 
evitably appeals  to  what,  below  temperamental  differences, 
remains  permanent  and  unchanging  in  us. 

"  Nature,"  as  Leonardo  says,  "  is  the  mistress  of  the 
higher  intelligencies  " ;  and  Goethe,  in  his  most  oracular 
utterances,  recalls  us  to  the  same  truth.  What  imagina- 
tion does,  and  what  the  personal  vision  of  the  individual 
artist  does,  is  to  deal  successfully  and  masterfully  with 
this  "  given,"  this  basic  element.  And  this  basic  element, 
this  permanent  common  ground,  this  universal  human 
assumption,  is  just  precisely  what,  in  popular  language,  we 
call  "  Nature " ;  that  substratum  of  objective  reality  in 
the  appearances  of  things,  which  makes  it  possible  for 


ONE     HUNDRED    BEST     BOOKS  13 

diversely  constructed  temperaments  to  make  their  differ- 
ences effective  and  intelligible. 

There  could  be  no  recognizable  differences,  no  conver- 
sation, in  fact,  if,  in  the  impossible  hypothesis  of  the 
absence  of  any  such  common  language,  we  all  shouted  at 
one  another  "  in  vacuo  "  and  out  of  pure  darkness.  It  is 
from  their  refusal  to  recognize  the  necessity  for  some- 
thing at  least  relatively  objective  in  what  the  individual 
imagination  works  upon,  that  certain  among  modern 
artists,  if  not  among  modern  poets,  bewilder  and  puzzle 
us.  They  have  a  right  to  make  endless  experiments  — 
every  original  mind  has  that  —  but  they  cannot  let  go 
their  hold  on  some  sort  of  objective  solidity  without  be- 
coming inarticulate,  without  giving  vent  to  such  unre- 
lated and  incoherent  cries  as  overtake  one  in  the  corridors 
of  Bedlam.  "  Nature  is  the  mistress  of  the  higher  in- 
telligencies,"  and  though  the  individual  imagination  is  at 
liberty  to  treat  Nature  with  a  certain  creative  contempt, 
it  cannot  afford  to  depart  altogether  from  her,  lest  by 
relinquishing  the  common  language  between  men  and 
men,  it  should  simply  flap  its  wings  in  an  enchanted  circle, 
and  utter  sounds  that  are  not  so  much  different  from  other 
sounds,  as  outside  the  region  where  any  sound  carries  an 
intelligible  meaning. 

The  absurd  idea  that  one  gets  wise  by  reading  books 
is  probably  at  the  bottom  of  the  abominable  pedantry 
that  thrusts  so  many  tiresome  pieces  of  antiquity  down 
the  throats  of  youth.  There  is  no  talisman  for  getting 
wise  —  some  of  the  wisest  in  the  world  never  open  a  book, 
and  yet  their  native  wit,  so  heavenly-free  from  "  culture," 
would  serve  to  challenge  Voltaire.  Lovers  of  books,  like 
other  infatuated  lovers,  best  know  the  account  they  find 


14  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

in  their  exquisite  obsessions.  None  of  the  explanations 
they  give  seem  to  cover  the  field  of  their  enjoyment.  The 
thing  is  a  passion;  a  sort  of  delicate  madness,  and  like 
other  passions,  quite  unintelligible  to  those  who  are  out- 
side. Persons  who  read  for  the  purpose  of  making  a 
success  of  their  added  erudition,  or  the  better  to  adapt 
themselves  —  what  a  phrase !  —  to  their  "  life's  work," 
are,  to  my  thinking,  like  the  wretches  who  throw  flowers 
into  graves.  What  sacrilege,  to  trail  the  reluctances  and 
coynesses,  the  shynesses  and  sweet  reserves  of  these 
"  f  urtivi  amores  "  at  the  heels  of  a  wretched  ambition  to 
be  "  cultivated  "  or  learned,  or  to  "  get  on  "  in  the  world ! 

Like  the  kingdom  of  heaven  and  all  other  high  and 
sacred  things,  the  choicest  sorts  of  books  only  reveal  the 
perfume  of  their  rare  essence  to  those  who  love  them  for 
themselves  in  pure  disinterestedness.  Of  course  they 
"  mix  in,"  these  best-loved  authors,  with  every  experi- 
ence we  encounter;  they  throw  around  places,  hours, 
situations,  occasions,  a  quite  special  glamour  of  their  own, 
just  as  one's  more  human  devotions  do;  but  though  they 
float,  like  a  diffused  aroma,  round  every  circumstance  of 
our  days,  and  may  even  make  tolerable  the  otherwise  in- 
tolerable hours  of  our  impertinent  "  life's  work,"  we  do 
not  love  them  because  they  help  us  here  or  help  us  there ; 
or  make  us  wiser  or  make  us  better ;  we  love  them  because 
they  are  what  they  are,  and  we  are  what  we  are ;  we  love 
them,  in  fact,  for  the  beautiful  reason  which  the  author 
of  that  noble  book  —  a  book  not  in  our  present  list,  by  the 
way,  because  of  something  obstinately  tough  and  tedious 
in  him  —  I  mean  Montaigne's  Essays  —  loved  his  sweet 
friend  Etienne. 

Any  other  commerce  between  books  and  their  readers 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  15 

smacks  of  Baconian  "  fruits  "  and  University  lectures.  It 
is  a  prostitution  of  pleasure  to  profit. 

As  with  all  the  rare  things  in  life,  the  most  delicate 
flavor  of  our  pleasure  is  found  not  exactly  and  precisely 
in  the  actual  taste  of  the  author  himself ;  not,  I  mean,  in 
the  snatching  of  huge  bites  out  of  him,  but  in  the  fragrance 
of  anticipation ;  in  the  dreamy  solicitations  of  indescribable 
afterthoughts ;  in  those  "  airy  tongues  that  syllable  men's 
names  "  on  the  "  sands  and  shores  "  of  the  remote  margins 
of  our  consciousness.  How  delicious  a  pleasure  there  is 
in  carrying  about  with  us  wherever  we  go  a  new  book  or  a 
new  translation  from  the  pen  of  our  especial  master !  We 
need  not  open  it ;  we  need  not  read  it  for  days ;  but  it  is 
there  —  there  to  be  caressed  and  to  caress  —  when  every- 
thing is  propitious,  and  the  profane  voices  are  hushed. 

I  suppose,  to  take  an  instance  that  has  for  myself  a 
peculiar  appeal,  the  present  edition  — "  brought  out "  by 
the  excellent  house  of  Macmillan  —  of  the  great  Dos- 
toievsky, is  producing  even  now  in  the  sensibility  of  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  queer  readers,  a  thrilling  series  of 
recurrent  pleasures,  like  the  intermittent  visits  of  one's 
well--beloved. 

Would  to  God  the  mortal  days  of  geniuses  like  Dos- 
toievsky could  be  so  extended  that  for  all  the  years  of 
one's  life,  one  would  have  such  works,  still  not  quite 
finished,  in  one's  lucky  hands ! 

I  sometimes  doubt  whether  these  sticklers  for  "  the  art 
of  condensation  "  are  really  lovers  of  books  at  all.  For 
myself,  I  would  class  their  cursed  short  stories  with  their 
teasing  "  economy  of  material,"  as  they  call  it,  with  those 
"  books  that  are  no  books,"  those  checker  boards  and 
moral  treatises  which  used  to  annoy  Elia  so. 


l6  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST     BOOKS 

Yes,  I  have  a  sneaking  feeling  that  all  this  modern  fuss 
about  "  art  "  and  the  "  creative  vision  "  and  "  the  projec- 
tion of  visualized  images/'  is  the  itching  vice  of  quite  a 
different  class  of  people,  from  those  who,  in  the  old,  sweet, 
epicurean  way,  loved  to  loiter  through  huge  digressive 
books,  with  the  ample  unpremeditated  enjoyment  of 
leisurely  travelers  wayfaring  along  a  wonderful  road. 
How  many  luckless  innocents  have  teased  and  fretted 
their  minds  into  a  forced  appreciation  of  that  artistic  ogre 
Flaubert,  and  his  laborious  pursuit  of  his  precious  "  exact 
word,"  when  they  might  have  been  pleasantly  sailing 
down  Rabelais'  rich  stream  of  immortal  nectar,  or  sweetly 
hugging  themselves  over  the  lovely  mischievousness  of 
Tristram  Shandy!  But  one  must  be  tolerant;  one  must 
make  allowances.  The  world  of  books  is  no  puritanical 
bourgeois-ridden  democracy ;  it  is  a  large  free  country,  a 
great  Pantagruelian  Utopia,  ruled  by  noble  kings. 

Our  "  One  Hundred  Best  Books  "  need  not  be  yours, 
nor  yours  ours ;  the  essential  thing  is  that  in  this  brief  in- 
terval between  darkness  and  darkness,  which  we  call  our 
life,  we  should  be  thrillingly  and  passionately  amused; 
innocently,  if  so  it  can  be  arranged  —  and  what  better  than 
books  lends  itself  to  that?  —  and  harmlessly,  too,  let  us 
hope,  God  help  us,  but  at  any  rate,  amused,  for  the  only 
unpardonable  sin  is  the  sin  of  taking  this  passing  world 
too  gravely.  Our  treasure  is  not  here ;  it  is  in  the  king- 
dom of  heaven,  and  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  Imagina- 
tion. Imagination !  How  all  other  ways  of  escape  from 
what  is  mediocre  in  our  tangled  lives  grow  pale  beside 
that  high  and  burning  star! 

With  Imagination  to  help  us  we  can  make  something  of 
our  days,  something  of  the  drama  of  this  confused  tur- 


ONE    HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS  17 

moil,  and  perhaps,  after  all  —  who  can  tell?  —  there  is 
more  in  it  than  mere  "  amusement."  Once  and  again,  as 
we  pause  in  our  reading,  there  comes  a  breath,  a  whisper, 
a  rumor,  of  something  else ;  of  something  over  and  above 
that  "  eternal  now  "  which  is  the  wisest  preoccupation  of 
our  passion,  but  not  wise  are  those  who  would  seek  to 
confine  this  fleeting  intimation  within  the  walls  of  reason 
or  of  system.  It  comes;  it  goes;  it  is;  it  is  not.  The 
Hundred  Best  Books  did  not  bring  it ;  the  Hundred  Best 
Books  cannot  take  it  away.  Strangely  and  wonderfully 
it  blends  itself  with  those  vague  memories  of  what  we 
have  read,  somewhere,  sometime,  and  not  always  alone. 
Strangely  and  wonderfully  it  blends  itself  with  those  other 
moments  when  the  best  books  in  the  world  seem  irrele- 
vant, and  all  "  culture "  an  impertinent  intrusion ;  but 
however  it  comes  and  however  it  goes,  it  is  the  thing  that 
makes  our  gravity  ridiculous;  our  philosophy  pedantic. 
It  is  the  thing  that  gives  to  the  "  amusements  "  of  the 
imagination  that  touch  of  burning  fire;  that  breath  of 
wider  air;  that  taste  of  sharper  salt,  which,  arriving  when 
we  least  expect  it,  and  least  —  heaven  knows  —  deserve 
it,  makes  any  final  opinion  upon  the  stuff  of  this  world 
vain  and  false;  and  any  condemnation  of  the  opinions  of 
others  foolish  and  empty.  It  destroys  our  assurances  as 
it  alleviates  our  miseries,  and  in  some  unspeakable  way, 
like  a  primrose  growing  on  the  edge  of  a  sepulchre,  it 
flings  forth  upon  the  heavy  night,  a  fleeting  signal,  "  Bon 
espoir  y  gist  au  fond !  " 


ONE  HUNDRED  BEST  BOOKS 

1.  The  Psalms  of  David. 

The  Psalms  remain,  whether  in  the  Latin  version 
or  in  the  authorized  English  translation,  the  most 
pathetic  and  poignant,  as  well  as  the  most  noble  and 
dignified  of  all  poetic  literature.  The  rarest  spirits 
of  our  race  will  always  return  to  them  at  every  epoch 
in  their  lives  for  consolation,  for  support  and  for 
repose. 

2.  Homer.     The  Odyssey.    Butcher  and  Lang's  Prose 

Translation. 

The  Odyssey  must  continue  to  appeal  to  adventur- 
ous persons  more  powerfully  than  any  other  of  the 
ancient  stories  because,  blent  with  the  classic  quality 
of  its  pure  Greek  style,  there  can  be  found  in  it  that 
magical  element  of  thrilling  romance,  which  belongs 
not  to  one  age,  but  to  all  time. 

3.  The     Bacchanals.    The     Bacchae     of     Euripides. 

Translated  by  Professor  Gilbert  Murray. 
Euripides,  the  favourite  poet  of  John  Milton  and 
Goethe,  is  the  most  modern  in  feeling,  the  most 
romantic  in  mood  of  all  the  Greek  poets.     One  is 
conscious  that  in  his  work,  as  in  the  sculpture  of 
Praxiteles,    the    calm    beauty    of    the   Apollonian 
temper  is  touched  by  the  wilder  rhythm  of  the 
perilous  music  of  Dionysus. 
19 


20  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

4.  Horace.    Any  selection  in  Latin  of  The  Odes  of  Hor- 

ace and  complete  prose  translation  published  by 

Macmillan. 

Flawlessly  hammered  out,  as  if  from  eternal  bronze 
— "sere  perennius  "—  The  Odes  of  Horace  are  the 
consummate  expression  of  the  pride,  the  reserve,  the 
tragic  playfulness,  the  epicurean  calm,  the  absolute 
distinction  of  the  Imperial  Roman  spirit.  A  few 
lines  taken  at  random  and  learned  by  heart  would 
act  as  a  talisman  in  all  hours  to  drive  away  the 
insolent  pressure  of  the  vulgar  and  common  crowd. 

5.  Catullus.    Any  Latin  edition  and  the  prose  transla- 

tion  published    by   Macmillan    bound   up    with 

Tibullus. 

Catullus,  the  contemporary  of  Julius  Caesar,  is,  of 
all  the  ancient  lyrical  poets,  the  one  most  modern 
and  neurotic  in  feeling.  One  discerns  in  his  work, 
breathing  through  the  ancient  Roman  reserve,  the 
pressure  of  that  passionate  and  rebellious  reaction 
to  life,  which  we  enjoy  in  the  most  magical  of  all 
later  poets  from  Villon  to  Verlaine. 

6.  Dante's  Divine  Comedy.    Best  edition  the  (t  Temple 

Classics/'  in  three  small  volumes,  with  the  Italian 
original  and  English  prose  translation  on  opposite 
pages. 

Dante's  poetry  can  legitimately  be  enjoyed  in  single 
great  passages,  of  which  there  are  more  in  the  "  In- 
ferno "  than  in  the  other  sections  of  the  poem.  His 
peculiar  quality  is  a  certain  blending  of  mordant 
realism  with  a  high  and  penetrating  beauty.  There 
is  no  need  in  reading  him  to  vex  oneself  with 
symbolic  interpretations.  He  is  at  his  best,  when 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  21 

from  behind  his  scholastic  philosophy,  bursts  forth, 
in  direct  personal  betrayal,  his  pride,  his  humility, 
his  passion,  and  his  disdain. 

7.  Rabelais.     The   English    translation   with   the   Dore 

illustrations. 

Rabelais  is  the  philosopher's  Bible  and  his  book  of 
outrageous  jests.  He  is  the  recondite  cult  of  wise 
and  magnanimous  spirits.  He  reconciles  Nature 
with  Art,  Man  with  God,  and  religious  piety  with 
shameless  enjoyment.  His  style  restores  to  us  our 
courage  and  our  joy ;  and  his  noble  buffoonery  gives 
us  back  the  sweet  wantonness  of  our  youth.  Ra- 
belais is  the  greatest  intellect  in  literature.  No  one 
has  ever  had  a  humor  so  large;  an  imagination  so 
creative,  or  a  spirit  so  world-swallowing,  so  humane, 
so  friendly. 

8.  Candida.    Any  French  edition  or  English  translation. 

Voltaire  was  a  true  man  of  action,  a  knight  of  the 
Holy  Ghost.  He  plunged  fiercely  into  the  human 
arena,  and  fought  through  a  laborious  life,  against 
obscurantism,  stupidity  and  tyranny.  He  had  a 
clear-cut,  aristocratic  mind.  He  hated  mystical 
balderdash,  clumsy  barbarity,  and  stupid  hypocrisy. 
Candide  is  not  only  a  complete  refutation  of  opti- 
mism ;  it  is  a  book  full  of  that  mischievous  humor, 
which  has  the  power,  more  than  anything  else,  of 
reconciling  us  to  the  business  of  enduring  life. 

9.  Shakespeare.    In  the  Temple  edition. 

It  is  time  Shakespeare  was  read  for  the  beauty  of 
his  poetry,  and  enjoyed  without  pedantry  and  with 
some  imagination.  The  less  usual  and  more  cynical 
of  his  plays,  such  as  Troilus,  and  Cressida,  Measure 


22  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS 

for  Measure  and  Timon  of  Athens,  will  be  found  to 
contain  some  very  interesting  commentaries  upon 
life. 

The  Shakespearean  attitude  of  mind  is  quite  a 
definite  and  articulate  one,  and  one  that  can  be,  by 
slow  degrees,  acquired,  even  by  persons  who  are  not 
cultivated  or  clever.  It  is  an  attitude  "  compounded 
of  many  simples,"  and,  like  the  melancholy  of 
Jaques,  it  wraps  us  about  "  in  a  most  humorous 
sadness."  But  the  essential  secret  of  Shakespeare's 
genius  is  best  apprehended  in  the  felicity  of  certain 
isolated  passionate  speeches,  and  in  the  magic  of  his 
songs. 
10.  Milton.  Any  edition. 

No  epicurean  lover  of  the  subtler  delicacies  in  poetic 
rhythm  or  of  the  more  exalted  and  translunar  har- 
monies in  the  imaginative  suggestiveness  of  words, 
can  afford  to  leave  Milton  untouched.  In  sheer 
felicity  of  beauty  —  the  beauty  of  suggestive  words, 
each  one  carrying  "  a  perfume  in  the  mention,"  and 
together,  by  their  arrangement  in  relation  to  one 
another,  conveying  a  thrill  of  absolute  and  final 
satisfaction  —  no  poem  in  our  language  surpasses 
Lycidas,  and  only  the  fine  great  odes  of  John  Keats 
approach  or  equal  it. 

There  are  passages,  too,  in  Paradise  Lost,  Paradise 
Regained  and  Samson  Agonistes,  which,  for  calm, 
flowing,  and  immortal  loveliness,  are  not  surpassed 
in  any  poetry  in  the  world. 

Milton's  work  witnesses  to  the  value  in  art  of  what 
is  ancient  and  traditional,  but  while  he  willingly 
uses  every  tradition  of  antiquity,  he  stamps  all  he 


ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS  23 

writes  with  his  own  formidable  image  and  super- 
scription. 

11.  Sir   Thomas    Browne.     Religio    Medici   and   Urn 

Burial.  In  the  "  Scott  Library  "  Series. 
The  very  spirit  of  ancient  Norwich,  the  mellowest 
and  most  historic  of  all  English  cities,  breathes  in 
these  sumptuous  and  aromatic  pages.  After  Lamb 
and  Pater,  both  of  whom  loved  him  well,  Browne  is 
the  subtlest  adept  in  the  recondite  mysteries  of 
rhythmic  prose  who  can  be  enjoyed  in  our  language. 
Not  to  catch  the  cadences  of  his  peculiar  music  is  to 
confess  oneself  deaf  to  the  finer  harmonies  of  words. 

12.  Goethe.    Faust,    translated   in   English   Poetry   by 

Bayard  Taylor.    Wilhelm  Meister,  in  Carlyle's 
translation.     Goethe's       Conversations       with 
Eckerman,  translation  in  Bohn's  Library. 
No  other  human  name,  except  Da  Vinci's,  carries 
the  high  associations  of  oracular  and  occult  wisdom 
as  far  as  Goethe's  does.     He  hears  the  voices  of 
"  the  Mothers  "  more  clearly  than  other  men  and  in 
heathen  loneliness  he  "  builds  up  the  pyramid  of  his 
existence." 

The  deep  authority  of  his  formidable  insight  can  be 
best  enjoyed,  not  without  little  side-lights  of  a 
laconic  irony,  in  the  "  Conversations " ;  while  in 
Wilhelm  Meister  we  learn  to  become  adepts  in  the 
art  of  living  in  the  Beautiful  and  True,  in  Faust 
that  abysmal  doubt  as  to  the  whole  mad  business  of 
life  is  undermined  with  a  craft  equal  to  his  own  in 
the  delineation  and  defeat  of  "the  queer  son  of 
Chaos." 


24  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST     BOOKS 

15.  Nietzsche.    Zarathustra,  The  Joyful  Wisdom,  and 
Ecce  Homo  are  all  translated  in  the  English  edi- 
tion of  Foulis  and  published  in  America  by  Mac- 
millan.  Lichtenberger's  exposition  of  his  doctrines 
is  in  the  same  series.  The  most  artistic  life  of  him 
is  by  Daniel  Halevy,  translated  from  the  French. 
Nietzsche's  writings  when  they  fall  into  the  hands 
of  Philistines  are  more  misunderstood  than  any 
others.     To  appreciate  his  noble  and  tragic  distinc- 
tion with  the  due  pinch  of  Attic  salt  it  is  necessary 
to  be  possessed  of  more  imagination  than  most  per- 
sons are  able  to  summon  up.     The  dramatic  gran- 
deur of   Nietzsche's  extraordinary  intellect  over- 
tops all  the  flashes  of  his  psychological  insight ;  and 
his  terrific  conclusions  remain  as  mere  foot-prints 
of  his  progress  from  height  to  height. 
1 8.  Heine.    Heine's  Prose  works  with  the  "  Confes- 
sions,"  translated  in  the  "Scott  Library."    A 
good  short  life  of  Heine  in  the  "  Great  Writers  " 
Series. 

Heine's  genius  remains  unique.  Full  of  dreamy  at- 
tachment to  Germany  he  lived  and  died  in  Paris,  but 
his  heart  was  always  with  the  exiles  of  Israel. 
Mocker  and  ribald,  he  touches  depths  of  sentimental 
tenderness  sounded  by  none  other.  He  fooled  the 
philosophers,  provoked  the  pious,  and  confused  the 
minds  of  his  free-thinking  friends  by  outbursts  of 
wilful  reaction.  He  sticks  the  horns  of  satyrish 
"  diablerie "  on  the  lovely  forehead  of  the  most 
delicate  romance;  and  he  flings  into  his  magical 
poems  of  love  and  the  sea  the  naughty  mud-pellets 
of  an  outrageous  capriciousness. 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST    BOOKS  25 

19.  Sudermann.     Song  of  Songs.     Translation  into  Eng- 

lish published  by  Huebsch  of  New  York. 
Sudermann  is  the  most  remarkable  and  characteris- 
tic of  modern  German  writers.  His  massive  and  la- 
borious realism,  his  firm  and  exhaustive  exposition 
of  turbulent  and  troubled  hearts,  his  heavy  sledge- 
hammer style,  his  comprehension  of  the  shadowy 
background  of  the  most  ponderous  sensuality,  are 
all  found  at  their  best  in  this  solemn  and  sordid  and 
pitiable  tale. 

20.  Hauptmann.    The  Fool  in  Christ,  translation  pub- 

lished by  Huebsch,  New  York. 
Hauptmann  seems,  of  all  recent  Teutonic  authors, 
the  one  who  has  in  the  highest  degree  that  tender 
imaginative  sentiment  mixed  with  rugged  and 
humorous  piety  which  one  finds  in  the  old  German 
Protestant  Mystics  and  in  such  works  of  art  as  the 
engravings  of  Albert  Durer  and  the  Wooden  Ma- 
donna of  Nuremburg.  "The  Fool  in  Christ" — 
outside  some  of  the  characters  in  Dostoievsky  —  is 
the  nearest  modern  approach  to  a  literary  interpre- 
tation of  what  remains  timeless  and  permanent  in 
the  Christ-Idea. 

21.  Ibsen.    Any  edition  of  Ibsen  containing  the  Wild 

Duck. 

Ibsen  is  still  the  most  formidable  of  obstinate  indi- 
vidualists. Absolute  self-reliance  is  the  note  he  con- 
stantly strikes.  He  is  obsessed  by  the  psychology 
of  moral  problems;  but  for  him  there  are  no  uni- 
versal ethical  laws  — "  the  golden  rule  is  that  there 
is  no  golden  rule  " —  thus  while  in  the  Pillars  of 
Society  he  advocates  candid  confession  and  honest 


26  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST     BOOKS 

revelation  of  the  truth  of  things ;  in  the  "  Wild 
Duck "  he  attacks  the  pig-headed  meddler,  who 
comes  "  dunning  us  with  claims  of  the  Ideal."  Ul- 
timately, though  absorbed  in  "  matters  of  con- 
science," it  is  as  an  artist  rather  than  as  a  philoso- 
pher that  he  visualizes  the  world. 

22.  Strindberg.    The  Confessions  of  a  Fool. 

Strindberg  has  obtained,  because  of  his  own  neurotic 
and  almost  feminine  clairvoyance,  a  diabolical  in- 
sight into  the  perversities  of  the  feminine  character. 
This  merciless  insight  manifested  in  all  his  works 
reaches  its  intensest  degree  in  the  "  Confessions  of 
a  Fool,'*  where  the  woman  implicated  surpasses  the 
perversities  of  the  normal  as  greatly  as  the  lashing 
energy  with  which  he  pursues  her  to  her  inmost 
retreats  surpasses  the  vengeance  of  any  ordinary 
lover. 

23.  Emerson.    Kentledge's  complete  works  of  Emerson, 

or  any  other  edition  containing  everything  in  one 

volume. 

The  clear,  chaste,  remote  and  distinguished  wisdom 
of  Emerson  with  its  shrewd  preacher's  wit  and 
country-bred  humor,  will  always  be  of  stirring  and 
tonic  value  to  certain  kindred  minds.  Others  will 
prove  him  of  little  worth ;  but  it  is  to  be  noted  that 
Nietzsche  found  him  a  sane  and  noble  influence 
principally  on  the  ground  of  his  serene  detachment 
from  the  phenomena  of  sin  and  disease  and  death. 
He  will  always  remain  suggestive  and  stimulating  to 
those  who  demand  a  spiritual  interpretation  of  the 
Universe  but  reluct  at  committing  themselves  to  any 
particular  creed. 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  27 

24.  Walt  Whitman.     The  complete  unexpurgated  edition 

of  all  his  poems,  with  his  prose  works  and  Mr. 
Traubel's  books  about  him  as  a  further  elucida- 
tion. 

Walt  Whitman  is  the  only  Optimist  and  perhaps  the 
only  prophet  of  Democracy  one  can  read  without 
shame.  The  magical  beauty  of  his  style  at  its  best 
has  not  even  yet  received  complete  justice.  He  has 
the  power  of  restoring  us  to  courage  and  joy  even 
under  circumstances  of  aggravated  gloom.  He  puts 
us  in  some  indescribable  manner  "  en  rapport  "  with 
the  large,  cool,  liquid  spaces  and  with  the  immense 
and  transparent  depths. 

More  than  any  he  is  the  poet  of  passionate  friend- 
ship and  the  poet  of  all  those  exquisite  evasive  emo- 
tions which  arise  when  our  loves  and  our  regrets  are 
blended  with  the  presence  of  Nature. 

25.  Edgar  Lee  Masters.     Spoon  River  Anthology,  pub- 

lished by  Macmillan. 

After  Whitman  and  Poe,  Mr.  Masters  is  by  far  the 
most  original  and  interesting  of  American  poets. 
There  is  something  Chaucerian  about  the  quizzical 
and  whimsical  manner  in  which  he  tells  his  brief 
and  homely  stories.  His  characters  are  penetrated 
with  the  bleak  and  yet  cheerful  tone  of  the  "  Middle 
West."  Something  quaint,  humorous  and  astrin- 
gent emerges  as  their  dominant  note. 
Mr.  Masters  has  the  massive  ironical  observation 
and  the  shrewd  humane  wit  of  the  great  English 
novelists  of  the  eighteenth  century.  His  dead  peo- 
ple reveal  "  the  true  truth "  of  their  sordid  and 
troubled  lives.  The  little  chances,  the  unguessed-at 


28  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

accidents,  the  undeserved  blows  of  a  capricious 
destiny,  which  batter  so  many  of  us  into  helpless  in- 
ertness, are  the  aspects  of  life  which  interest  him 
most. 

26.  Theodore  Dreiser.     The  Titan. 

Of  all  modern  novelists  Theodore  Dreiser  most  en- 
tirely catches  the  spirit  of  America.  Here  is  the 
huge  torrential  stream  of  material  energies.  Here 
are  the  men  and  women,  so  pushed  and  driven  and 
parched  and  bleached,  by  the  enormous  forces  of 
industry  and  commerce,  that  all  distinction  in  them 
seems  to  be  reduced  to  a  strange  colorlessness ;  while 
the  primordial  animal  cravings,  greedy,  earth-born, 
fumble  after  their  aims  across  the  sad  and  littered 
stage  of  sombre  scenery. 

There  is  something  epic  —  something  enormous  and 
amorphous  —  like  the  body  of  an  elemental  giant  — 
about  each  of  these  books.  In  the  "  Titan,"  espe- 
cially, the  peculiar  power  of  Dreiser's  massive, 
coulter-like  impetus  is  evident.  Here  we  realize 
how,  between  animal  passion  and  material  ambi- 
tion, there  is  little  room  left  in  such  a  nature  as 
Cooperwood's  for  any  complicated  subtlety.  All  is 
simple,  direct,  hard  and  healthy  —  a  very  epitome 
and  incarnation  of  the  life-force,  as  it  manifests 
itself  in  America. 

27.  Cervantes.     Don  Quixote.    In  any  translation  ex- 

cept those  vulgarized  by  eighteenth  century  taste. 
Cervantes'  great,  ironical,  romantic  story  is  written 
in  a  style  so  noble,  so  nervous,  so  humane,  so 
branded  with  reality,  that,  as  the  wise  critic  has  said, 
the  mere  touch  and  impact  of  it  puts  courage  into 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 


our  veins.  It  is  not  necessary  to  read  every  word 
of  this  old  book.  There  are  tedious  passages.  But 
not  to  have  ever  opened  it;  not  to  have  caught  the 
tone,  the  temper,  the  terrible  courage,  the  infinite 
sadness  of  it,  is  to  have  missed  being  present  at  one 
of  the  "  great  gestures  "  of  the  undying,  unconquer- 
able spirit  of  humanity. 

28.  Victor  Hugo.     The  Toilers  of  the   Sea.     In  any 

translation. 

Victor  Hugo  is  the  greatest  of  all  incorrigible  ro- 
manticists. Something  between  a  prophet,  a  charla- 
tan, a  rhetorician,  and  a  spoiled  child,  he  believes  in 
God,  in  democracy,  in  innocence,  in  justice,  and  he 
has  a  noble  and  unqualified  devotion  to  human  hero- 
ism and  the  depths  of  the  dangerous  sea.  He  has 
that  arbitrary,  maniacal  inventive  imagination  which 
is  very  rare  except  in  children  —  and  in  spite  of  his 
theatrical  gestures  he  has  the  power  of  conjuring  up 
scenes  of  incredible  beauty  and  terror. 

29.  Balzac.      Lost     Illusions.      Cousin     Bette.      Pere 

Goriot.    Human   Comedy,   in   any   translation. 

Saintsbury's  is  as  good  as  any. 
Balzac's  books  create  a  complete  world,  which  has 
many  points  of  contact  with  reality;  but,  in  a  deep 
essential  sense,  is  the  projection  of  the  novelist's  own 
passionate  imagination.  A  thundering  tide  of  sub- 
terranean energy,  furious  and  titanic,  sweeps,  with 
its  weight  of  ponderous  details,  through  every  page 
of  these  dramatic  volumes.  Every  character  has  its 
obsession,  its  secret  vice,  its  spiritual  drug.  Even 
when,  as  in  the  case  of  Vautrin,  he  lets  his  demonic 
fancy  carry  him  very  far,  there  is  a  grandeur,  an 


3O  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

amplitude,  a  smouldering  flame  of  passion,  which 
redeem  a  thousand  preposterous  extravagances. 
His  dramatic  psychology  is  often  drowned  in  the 
tide  of  his  creative  energy ;  but  though  his  world  is 
not  always  the  world  of  our  experience,  it  is  always 
a  world  in  which  we  are  magnetized  to  feel  at  home. 
It  is  consistent  with  its  own  amazing  laws ;  the  laws 
of    the    incredible    Balzacian    genius.     Profoundly 
moral  in  its  basic  tendency,  the  "  Human  Comedy  " 
seems  to  point,  in  its  philosophical  undercurrent,  at 
the  permanent  need  in  our  wayward  and  childish 
emotionalism,  for  wise  and  master-guides,  both  in 
the  sphere  of  religion  and  in  the  sphere  of  politics. 
32.  Guy  de  Maupassant.    Le  Maison  Tellier.    Madame 
Tellier's  Establishment.     Any  translation,  pref- 
erably not  one  bound  in  paper  or  in  an  "  Edition 
de  Luxe." 

Guy  de  Maupassant's  short  stories  remain,  with 
those  of  Henry  James  and  Joseph  Conrad,  the  very 
best  of  their  kind.  After  "  Madame  Tellier's  Es- 
tablishment" perhaps  the  stories  called  respect- 
ively "  A  Farm  Girl "  and  "  Love  "  are  the  best  he 
wrote. 

He  has  the  eternal  excellencies  of  savage  humanity, 
savage  sincerity,  and  savage  brevity.  His  pessimism 
is  deep,  absolute,  unshaken ;  —  and  the  world,  as  we 
know  it,  deserves  what  he  gives  it  of  sensualized 
literary  reactions,  each  one  like  the  falling  thud  of 
the  blade  of  a  murderous  axe. 
His  racking,  scooping,  combing  insight,  into  the  re- 
cesses of  man's  natural  appetites  will  never  be  sur- 
passed. How  under  the  glance  of  his  Norman 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  3! 

anger,  all  manner  of  pretty  subterfuges  fade  away ; 
and  "  the  real  thing  "  stands  out,  as  Nature  and  the 
Earth  know  it  —  stark,  bleak,  terrible  and  lovely." 
His  subjects  may  not  wander  very  far  from  the  basic 
situations.  He  does  not  deal  in  spiritual  subtleties. 
But  when  he  hits,  he  hits  the  mark. 

33.  Stendhal   (Henri  Beyle).     Le  Rouge  et  le  Noir. 

Either  the  original  French  or  any  translation,  if 
possible  with  a  preface;  for  the  life  of  Stendhal 
is  of  extraordinary  interest. 

Standhal  is  one  of  those  who,  following  Goethe  and 
anticipating  Nietzsche,  has  not  hesitated  to  propound 
the  psychological  justifications  for  a  life  based  upon 
pagan  rather  than  Christian  ethics.  A  shrewd  and 
sly  observer,  with  his  own  peculiar  brand  of  the 
egoistic  cult,  Stendhal  lived  a  life  of  desperately 
absorbing  emotions,  most  of  them  intellectual  and 
erotic.  He  made  an  aesthetic  use  of  the  Will  to 
Power  before  even  Nietzsche  used  that  singular  ex- 
pression. In  "  Le  Rouge  et  le  Noir "  the  eternal 
sex-struggle  with  its  fierce  accompaniment  of  "  Odi 
et  Amo  "  is  concentrated  in  the  clash  of  opposing 
forms  of  pride;  the  pride  of  intellect  against  the 
pride  of  sex- vanity. 

No  writer  has  ever  lived  with  more  contempt  for 
mere  sedentary  theories  or  a  fiercer  mania  for  the 
jagged  and  multifarious  edges  of  life's  pluralistic 
eccentricity.  For  any  reader  teased  and  worried  by 
idealistic  perversion  this  obstinate  materialistic  sage 
will  have  untold  value.  And  yet  he  knows,  none 
better,  the  place  of  sentiment  in  life ! 


32  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

34.  Anatole  France.  L'Orme  de  Mail.  L'Abbe  Jerome 
Coignard.  Le  Livre  de  mon  Ami.  Either  in 
French  or  the  authorised  English  translation. 
Anatole  France,  now  translated  into  English,  is  the 
most  classical,  the  most  ironical,  the  most  refined, 
of  all  modern  European  writers.  He  is  also,  of  all 
others,  the  most  antipathetic  to  the  Anglo-Saxon 
type  of  mind.  In  a  word  he  is  a  humanist  of  the 
great  tradition  —  a  civilized  artist  —  a  great  and 
wise  man.  He  is  Rabelaisian  and  Voltairian,  at  the 
same  time.  His  style  has  something  of  the  urbanity, 
the  unction,  the  fine  malice,  of  Renan ;  but  it  has  also 
a  quality  peculiar  to  its  creator  —  a  sort  of  trans- 
parent objectivity,  lucid  as  rarified  air,  and  con- 
temptuously cold  as  a  fragment  of  antique  marble. 
Monsieur  Bergeret,  who  appears  in  all  four  of  the 
masterpieces  devoted  to  Contemporary  France,  is  a 
creation  worthy,  as  some  one  has  said,  of  the  author 
of  Tristram  Shandy.  One  cannot  forget  that  Ana- 
tole France  spent  his  childhood  among  the  book- 
shops on  the  South  side  of  the  Seine.  We  are  con- 
scious all  the  while  in  reading  him  of  the  wise, 
tender,  pitiful  detachment  of  a  true  scholar  of  the 
classics,  contemplating  the  mad  pell-mell  of  human 
life  from  a  certain  epicurean  remoteness,  and  loving 
and  mocking  the  sons  and  daughters  of  men,  as  if 
they  were  little  children  or  comical  small  animals. 
37.  Remy  de  Gourmont.  line  Nuit  au  Luxembourg. 
Translated  with  a  preface  by  Arthur  Ransome, 
published  by  Luce,  Boston. 

Remy  de  Gourmont's  death  must  be  regretted  by  all 
lovers  of  the  rare  in  art  and  the  remote  in  charac- 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  33 

ter.  As  a  poet  his  "  Litany  of  the  Rose  "  has  that 
strange,  ambiguous,  sinister,  and  lovely  appeal,  the 
full  appreciation  of  which  is  an  initiation  into  all  the 
"  enclosed  gardens  "  of  the  world. 
He  is  a  great  critic  —  perhaps  the  greatest  since 
Walter  Pater  —  and  as  a  philosopher  his  constant 
and  frank  advocacy  of  a  noble  and  shameless 
Hedonism  has  helped  to  clear  the  air  in  the  track 
of  Nietzsche's  thunder-bolts. 

His  audacity  in  placing  an  exposition  of  the  very 
principles  of  Epicurean  Hedonism,  touched  with 
Spinozistic  equanimity,  into  the  mouth  of  our  Lord, 
wandering  through  the  Luxembourg  Gardens,  may 
perhaps  startle  certain  gentle  souls,  but  the  Dorian 
delicacy  of  what  might  for  a  moment  appear  blas- 
phemous robs  this  charming  Idyll  of  any  gross  or 
merely  popular  profanity.  It  is  a  book  for  those 
who  have  passed  through  more  than  one  intellectual 
Renaissance.  Like  the  "  Golden  Ass  "  of  Apuleius 
it  has  a  philosophical  justification  for  its  mythologi- 
cal audacity. 
38.  Paul  Bourget.  Le  Disciple. 

"  Le  Disciple  "  is  perhaps  the  best  work  of  this  vo^ 
luminous  and  interesting  writer.  Devoid  of  irony, 
deficient  in  humor,  lacking  any  large  imaginative 
power,  Paul  Bourget  holds,  all  the  same,  an  unassail- 
able place  among  French  writers.  Though  a  de- 
voted adherent  of  Goethe  and  Stendhal,  Bourget 
represents,  along  with  Bordeaux,  the  conservative 
ethical  reaction.  He  upholds  Catholicism  and  the 
sacredness  of  the  "  home."  He  is  a  master  in  plot 
and  has  a  clear,  vigorous  and  appealing  style.  A 


34  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS 

gravely  portentous  sentiment  sometimes  spoils  his 
tragic  effects;  but  every  lover  of  Paris  will  enjoy 
the  unctuous  elaboration  of  the  "  backgrounds  "  of 
his  stories,  touched  often  with  the  most  delicate  and 
mellow  evocations  of  that  City's  atmosphere. 

39.  Remain  Rolland.    Jean  Christophe.     Translated  by 

Gilbert  Cannan. 

Rolland's  "  Christophe  "  is  without  doubt  the  most 
remarkable  book  that  has  appeared  in  Europe  since 
Nietzsche's  "  Ecce  Homo/' 

It  is  a  profoundly  suggestive  treatise  upon  the  re- 
lations between  art  and  life.  It  contains  a  deep  and 
heroic  philosophy  —  the  philosophy  of  the  worship 
of  the  mysterious  life- force  as  God;  and  of  the 
reaching  out  beyond  the  turmoil  of  good  and  evil 
towards  some  vast  and  dimly  articulated  reconcilia- 
tion. Since  "  Wilhelm  Meister  "  no  book  has  been 
written  more  valuable  as  an  intellectual  ladder  to 
the  higher  levels  of  aesthetic  thought  and  feeling. 
Massive  and  dramatic,  powerful  and  suggestive,  it 
magnetizes  us  into  an  acceptance  of  its  daring  and 
optimistic  hopes  for  the  world ;  of  its  noble  sugges- 
tions of  a  spiritual  synthesis  of  the  opposing  race- 
traditions  of  Europe.  Of  all  the  books  mentioned 
in  this  list  it  is  the  one  which  the  compiler  would 
most  strongly  recommend  to  the  notice  of  those  anx- 
ious to  win  a  firmer  intellectual  standing-ground. 

40.  Gabriele  D'Annunzio.    The  Flame  of  Life.    The 

Triumph  of  Death.     Translated  by  Arthur  Horn- 
blow. 

D'Annunzio  is  the  most  truly  Italian,  the  most  in- 
veterately  Latin,  of  all  recent  writers.  Without 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  35 

V 

light  and  shade,  without  "  nuance,"  without  humor 
or  irony,  he  compels  our  attention  by  the  clear-cut, 
monumental  images  he  projects,  by  the  purple  and 
scarlet  splendor  of  his  imperial  dreams. 
His  philosophy,  though  lacking  in  the  deep  and  tragic 
imagination  of  Nietzsche,  has  something  of  the 
Nietzschean  intellectual  fury.  He  teaches  a  shame- 
less and  antinomian  hedonism,  narrower,  less  hu- 
mane, but  more  fervid  and  emotional,  than  that 
taught  by  Remy  de  Gourmont. 
In  "  The  Triumph  of  Death  "  we  find  a  fierce  smol- 
dering voluptuousness,  expressed  with  a  hard  and 
brutal  realism  which  recalls  the  frescoes  on  the 
walls  of  ancient  Pompeii.  In  "  The  Flame  of 
Life  "  we  have  in  superb  rhetoric  the  most  colored 
and  ardent  description  of  Venice  to  be  found  in  all 
literature.  Perhaps  the  finest  passage  he  ever 
wrote  is  that  account  of  the  speech  of  the  Master 
of  Life  in  the  Doge's  Palace  with  its  incomparable 
eulogy  upon  Veronese  and  its  allusion  to  Pisanello's 
head  of  Sigismondo  Malatesta. 

42.  Dostoievsky.     Crime  and  Punishment.     The  Idiot. 
The  Brothers  Karamazov.     The  Insulted  and 
Injured.    The  Possessed.     Translated  by  Con- 
stance   Garnett    and    published    by    Macmillan. 
Other  translations  in  Everyman's  Library. 
Dostoievsky  is  the  greatest  and  most  racial  of  all  Rus- 
sian writers.    He  is  the  subtlest  psychologist  in  fiction. 
As  an  artist  he  has  a  dark  and  sombre  intensity 
and  an  imaginative  vehemence  only  surpassed  by 
Shakespeare.     As    a    philosopher    he    anticipates 
Nietzsche  in  the  direction  of  his  insight,  though 


36  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS 

in  his  conclusions  he  is  diametrically  opposite.  He 
teaches  that  out  of  weakness,  abnormality,  perversity, 
foolishness,  desperation,  abandonment,  and  a  mor- 
bid pleasure  in  humiliation,  it  is  possible  to  arrive 
at  high  and  unutterable  levels  of  spiritual  ecstasy. 
His  ideal  is  sanctity  —  not  morality  —  and  his  reve- 
lations of  the  impassioned  and  insane  motives  of 
human  nature  —  its  instinct  towards  self-destruction 
for  instance  —  will  never  be  surpassed  for  their  ter- 
rible and  convincing  truth. 

The  strange  Slavophil  dream  of  the  regeneration  of 
the  world  by  the  power  of  the  Russian  soul  and  the 
magic  of  the  "  White  Christ  who  comes  out  of 
Russia "  could  not  be  more  arrestingly  expressed 
than  in  these  passionate  and  extraordinary  works 
of  art. 
47.  Turgeniev.  Virgin  Soil.  A  Sportsman's  Sketches. 

Translated  by  Constance  Garnett.    And  "Lisa" 

in  Everyman's  Library. 

Turgeniev  is  by  far  the  most  "artistic"  as  he  is 
the  most  disillusioned  and  ironical  of  Russian  writ- 
ers. With  a  tender  poetical  delicacy,  almost  worthy 
of  Shakespeare,  he  sketches  his  appealing  portraits 
of  young  girls.  His  style  is  clear  —  objective  — 
winnowed  and  fastidious.  He  has  certain  charming 
old-fashioned  weaknesses  —  as  for  instance  his 
trick  of  over-emphasizing  the  differences  between  his 
bad  and  good  characters;  but  there  is  a  clear-cut 
distinction,  and  a  lucid  charm  about  his  work  that 
reminds  one  of  certain  old  crayon  drawings  or  cer- 
tain delicate  water-color  sketches.  His  allusions  to 
natural  scenery  are  always  introduced  with  peculiar 


ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS  37 

appropriateness  and  are  never  permitted  to  dominate 
the  dramatic  element  of  the  story  as  happens  so 
often  in  other  writers. 

There  is  a  sad  and  tender  vein  of  unobtrusive  moral- 
izing running  through  his  work  but  one  is  conscious 
that  at  bottom  he  is  profoundly  pessimistic  and  dis- 
enchanted. The  gaiety  of  Turgeniev  is  winning 
and  unforced;  his  sentiment  natural  and  never 
"  staled  or  rung  upon."  The  pensive  detachment 
of  a  sensitive  and  yet  not  altogether  unworldly 
spirit  seems  to  be  the  final  impression  evoked  by  his 
books. 
50.  Gorki  —  Foma  Gordyeff.  Translation  published  by 

Scribners. 

Maxim  Gorki  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  of 
Russian  writers.  His  books  have  that  flavour  of 
the  soil  and  that  courageous  spirit  of  vagabondage 
and  social  independence  which  is  so  rare  and  valu- 
able a  quality  in  literature. 

"  Foma  Gordyeff  "  is,  after  Dostoievsky's  master- 
pieces, the  most  suggestive  and  arresting  of  Russian 
stories.  That  paralysis  of  the  will  which  descends 
like  an  evil  cloud  upon  Foma  and  at  the  same  time 
seems  to  cause  the  ground  to  open  under  his  feet 
and  precipitate  him  into  mysterious  depths  of  noth- 
ingness, is  at  once  tragically  significant  of  certain 
aspects  of  the  Russian  soul  and  full  of  mysterious 
warnings  to  all  those  modern  spirits  in  whom  the 
power  of  action  is  "  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast 
of  thought." 

For  those  who  have  been  "  fooled  to  the  top  of  their 
bent "  by  the  stupidities  and  brutalities  of  the  crowd 


38  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

there  is  a  savage  satisfaction  in  reading  of  Foma's 
insane  outbursts  of  misanthropy. 

51.  Tchekoff —  Seagull.     Tchekoff' s    plays    and    short 

stories  are  published  by  Scribners  in  admirable 

translations. 

Tchekoff  is  one  of  the  gentlest  and  sweetest  tem- 
pered of  Russian  writers.  There  is  in  him  a  genu- 
ine graciousness,  a  politeness  of  soul,  an  innate  deli- 
cacy, which  is  not  touched  —  as  such  qualities  often 
are  in  the  work  of  Turgeniev  —  with  any  kind  of 
self-conscious  Olympianism.  A  doctor,  a  consump- 
tive, and  a  passionate  lover  of  children,  there  is  a 
whimsical  humanity  about  all  that  Tchekoff  writes 
which  has  a  singular  and  quite  special  appeal. 
The  "  Seagull "  is  a  play  full  of  delicate  subtleties 
and  dreamy  glimpses  of  shy  humane  wisdom.  The 
manner  in  which  outward  things  —  the  mere  back- 
ground and  scenery  of  the  play  —  are  used  to  deepen 
and  enhance  the  dramatic  interest  is  a  thing  pecu- 
liarly characteristic  of  this  author.  Tchekoff  has 
that  kind  of  imaginative  sensibility  which  makes 
every  material  object  one  encounters  significant 
with  spiritual  intimations. 

The  mere  business  of  plot  —  whether  in  his  plays 
or  stories  —  is  not  the  important  matter.  The  im- 
portant matter  is  a  certain  sudden  and  pathetic  il- 
lumination thrown  upon  the  essential  truth  by  some 
casual  grouping  of  persons  or  of  things  —  some 
emphatic  or  symbolic  gesture  —  some  significant 
movement  among  the  silent  "  listeners." 

52.  Artzibasheff.     Sanine,     translation     published     by 

Huebsch. 


ONE     HUNDRED    BEST     BOOKS  39 

Artzibasheff  is  an  extremist.  The  suicidal  "  motif  " 
in  the  "  Breaking-point "  is  worked  out  with  an  ap- 
palling and  devastating  thoroughness. 
Pessimism,  in  a  superficial  sense,  could  hardly  go 
further;  though  compared  with  Dostoievsky's  in- 
sight into  the  "  infinite  "  in  character,  one  is  con- 
scious of  a  certain  closing  of  doors  and  narrowing 
of  issues.  "  Sanine  "  himself  is  a  sort  of  idealiza- 
tion of  the  sublimated  common  sense  which  seems  to 
be  this  writer's  selected  virtue.  Artzibasheff  ap- 
pears to  advocate,  as  the  wisest  and  sanest  way  of 
dealing  with  life,  a  certain  robust  and  contemptuous 
self-assertion,  kindly,  genial,  without  baseness  or 
malice;  but  free  from  any  scruple  and  quite  un- 
troubled by  remorse. 

If  regarded  seriously  —  as  he  appears  to  be  intended 
to  be  —  as  an  approximate  human  ideal,  one  cannot 
help  feeling  that  in  spite  of  his  humorous  anarchism 
and  subjective  zest  for  life,  Sanine  has  in  him  some- 
thing sententious  and  tiresome.  He  is,  so  to  speak, 
an  immoral  prig;  nor  do  his  vivacious  spirits  com- 
pensate us  for  the  lack  of  delicacy  and  irony  in  him. 
On  the  other  hand  there  is  something  direct,  down- 
right and  "honest"  about  his  clear-thinking,  and 
his  shameless  eroticism  which  wins  our  liking  and 
affection,  if  not  our  admiration.  Artzibasheff  is  in- 
deed one  of  the  few  writers  who  dare  excite  our 
sympathy  not  only  for  the  seduced  in  this  world 
but  for  the  seducer. 
53.  Sterne  —  Tristram  Shandy. 

.  Sterne  is  a  writer  who  less  than  any  one  else  in  the 
present  list  reveals  the  secrets  of  his  manner  and 


4O  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS 

mind  to  the  casual  and  hasty  reader.  "  Tristram 
Shandy "  and  "  The  Sentimental  Journey "  are 
books  to  be  enjoyed  slowly  and  lingeringly,  with 
many  humorous  after-thoughts  and  a  certain  Rabe- 
laisian unction.  A  shrewd  and  ironical  wisdom, 
gentle  and  light-fingered  and  redolent  of  evasive 
sentiment,  is  evoked  from  these  digressive  and  wan- 
ton pages. 

At  his  best  Sterne  is  capable  of  an  imaginative  in- 
terpretation of  character  which  for  delicacy  and 
subtlety  has  never  been  surpassed.  For  the  Epi- 
curean in  literature,  his  unfailing  charm  will  be 
found  in  his  style  —  a  style  so  baffling  in  the  fur- 
tive beauty  of  its  disarming  simplicity  that  even 
the  greatest  of  literary  critics  have  been  unable 
to  analyze  its  peculiar  flavour.  There  is  a  win- 
nowed purity  about  it,  and  a  kind  of  elfish  grace; 
and  with  both  these  things  there  mixes,  strangely 
enough,  a  certain  homely,  almost  Dutch  domesticity, 
quaint  and  mellow  and  a  little  wanton  —  like  a  pic- 
ture by  Jan  Steen. 
54.  Jonathan  Swift.  Tale  of  a  Tub. 

Swift's  mysterious  and  saturnine  character,  his  out- 
bursts of  terrible  rage;  his  exquisite  moments  of 
tenderness ;  his  sledge-hammer  blows ;  his  diabolical 
irony;  form  a  dramatic  and  tragic  spectacle  which 
no  psychologist  can  afford  to  miss. 
With  the  "  saeva  indignatio  "  alluded  to  in  his  own 
epitaph,  he  puts  his  back,  as  it  were,  to  the  "fla- 
mantia  moenia  mundi "  and  hits  out,  insanely  and 
blindly,  at  the  human  crowd  he  loathes.  His  se- 


ONE     HUNDRED    BEST     BOOKS  4! 

cretive  and  desperate  passion  for  Stella,  his  little 
girl^  pupil;  his  barbarous  treatment  of  Vanessa  — 
his  savage  championship  of  the  Irish  people  against 
the  Government  —  make  up  the  dominant  "  notes  " 
of  a  character  so  formidable  that  the  terror  of  his 
personality  strikes  us  with  the  force  of  an  engine 
of  destruction. 

His  misanthropy  is  like  the  misanthropy  of  Shake- 
speare's Timon  —  his  crushing  sarcasms  strike  blow 
after  blow  at  the  poor  flesh  and  blood  he  despises. 
The  hatefulness  of  average  humanity  drives  him 
to  distraction  and  in  his  madness,  like  a  wounded 
Titan,  he  spares  nothing.  To  the  whole  human 
race  he  seems  to  utter  the  terrible  words  he  puts 
into  the  mouth  of  God: 

"I  to  such  blockheads  set  my  wit, 
And  damn  you  all  —  Go,  go,  you're  bit !  " 

55.  Charles  Lamb.    The  Essays  of  Elia. 

Charles  Lamb  remains,  of  all  English  prose- writers, 
the  one  whose  manner  is  the  most  beautiful.  So 
rich,  so  delicate,  so  imaginative,  so  full  of  surprises, 
is  the  style  of  this  seductive  writer,  that,  for  sheer 
magic  and  inspiration,  his  equals  can  only  be  found 
among  the  very  greatest  poets.  * 
It  is  impossible  to  over-estimate  the  value  of  Charles 
Lamb's  philosophy.  He  indicates  in  his  delicate 
evasive  way  —  not  directly,  but  as  it  were,  in  little 
fragments  and  morsels  and  broken  snatches  —  a 
deep  and  subtle  reconciliation  between  the  wisdom 
of  Epicurus  and  the  wisdom  of  Christ.  And 
through  and  beyond  all  this,  there  may  be  felt,  as 


42  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST    BOOKS 

with  the  great  poets,  an  indescribable  sense  of 
something  withdrawn,  withheld,  reserved,  inscruta- 
ble—  a  sense  of  a  secret,  rather  to  be  intimated 
to  the  initiated,  than  revealed  to  the  vulgar  —  a  sense 
of  a  clue  to  a  sort  of  Pantagruelian  serenity ;  a  se- 
renity produced  by  no  crude  optimism  but  by  some 
happy  inward  knowledge  of  a  neglected  hope.  The 
great  Rabelaisian  motto,  "  bon  espoir  y  gist  au 
fond ! "  seems  to  emanate  from  the  most  wistful 
and  poignant  of  his  pages.  He  pities  the  unpitied, 
he  redeems  the  commonplace,  he  makes  the  ordi- 
nary as  if  it  were  not  ordinary,  and  by  the  sheer 
genius  of  his  imagination  he  throws  an  indescrib- 
able glamour  over  the  "  little  things  "  of  the  dark- 
est of  our  days. 

Moving  among  old  books,  old  houses,  old  streets, 
old  acquaintances,  old  wines,  old  pictures,  old  mem- 
ories, he  is  yet  possessed  of  so  original  and  personal 
a  touch  that  his  own  wit  seems  as  though  it  were  the 
very  soul  and  body  of  the  qualities  he  so  caressingly 
interprets. 
56.  Sir  Walter  Scott.  Guy  Mannering.  Bride  of  Lam- 

mermoor.  Heart  of  Midlothian. 
The  large,  easy,  leisurely  manner  of  Scott's  writ- 
ing, its  digressiveness,  its  nonchalant  carelessness, 
its  indifference  to  artistic  quality,  has  in  some  sort 
of  way  numbed  and  atrophied  the  interest  in  his 
work  of  those  who  have  been  caught  up  and  way- 
laid by  the  modern  spirit.  And  yet  Scott's  novels 
have  ample  and  admirable  excellencies.  In  his  ex- 
pansive and  digressive  fashion  he  can  give  his  char- 
acters —  especially  the  older  and  the  more  idiosyn- 


ONE     HUNDRED    BEST     BOOKS  43 

cratic  among  them  —  a  surprising  and  convincing 
verisimilitude. 

He  can  create  a  plot  which,  though  not  dramatically 
flawless,  has  movement  and  energy  and  stir.  The 
sweetness  and  modesty  of  his  disposition  lends  itself 
to  his  portrayal  of  the  more  gracious  aspects  of 
human  life,  especially  as  seen  in  the  humours  and 
oddities  of  very  simple  and  naive  persons. 
Under  the  stress  of  occasional  emotion  he  can  rise 
to  quite  noble  heights  of  feeling  and  he  is  able  to 
throw  a  startling  glamour  of  romance  over  certain 
familiar  and  recurrent  human  situations.  At  his 
best  there  is  a  grandeur  and  simplicity  of  utterance 
about  what  his  characters  say  and  an  ease  and 
largeness  of  sympathy  about  his  own  commentaries 
upon  them,  which  must  win  admiration  even  from 
those  most  avid  of  modern  pathology.  Without  the 
passion  of  Balzac,  or  the  insight  of  Dostoievsky,  or 
the  art  of  Tnrgeniev,  there  is  yet,  in  the  sweetness 
of  Scott's  own  personality,  and  in  the  biblical  grand- 
eur of  certain  of  the  scenes  he  evokes,  a  quality 
and  a  charm  which  it  would  be  at  once  foolish  and 
arbitrary  to  neglect. 
59.  Thackeray.  The  History  of  Henry  Esmond. 

Thackeray  is  a  writer  who  occupies  a  curious  and 
very  interesting  position.  Devoid  of  the  noble  and 
romantic  sympathies  of  Scott,  and  corrupted  to  the 
basic  fibres  of  his  being  by  Early  Victorian  snob- 
bishness, he  is  yet  —  none  can  deny  it  —  a  power- 
ful creator  of  living  people  and  an  accomplished  and 
graceful  stylist. 
Without  philosophy,  without  faith,  without  moral 


44  °NE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS 

courage,  the  uneasy  slave  of  conventional  morality, 
and  with  a  hopeless  vein  of  sheer  worldly  philistin- 
ism  in  his  book,  Thackeray  is  yet  able,  by  a  certain 
unconquerable  insight  into  the  motives  and  impulses 
of  mediocre  people,  and  by  a  certain  weight  and 
mass  of  creative  force,  to  give  a  convincing  reality 
to  his  pictures  of  life,  which  is  almost  devastating 
in  its  sneering  and  sentimental  accuracy. 
The  most  winning  and  attractive  thing  about  him  is 
his  devotion  to  the  eighteenth  century;  a  century 
whose  manners  he  is  able  to  depict  in  his  large  and 
gracious  way  without  being  disturbed  by  the  pres- 
sure of  that  contemporary  vulgarity  which  finds  a 
too  lively  response  in  something  bourgeois  and  snob- 
bish in  his  own  nature. 

Dealing  with  the  eighteenth  century  he  escapes  not 
only  from  his  age  but  from  himself. 
60.  Charles  Dickens.     Great  Expectations. 

The  compiler  has  placed  in  this  list  only  one  of 
Dickens'  books  for  a  somewhat  different  reason 
from  that  which  has  influenced  him  in  other  cases. 
All  Dickens'  novels  have  a  unique  value,  and  such 
an  equal  value,  that  almost  any  one  of  them,  chosen 
at  random,  can  serve  as  an  example  of  the  rest. 
Those  who  still  are  not  prohibited,  by  temperamental 
difficulty  or  by  some  modern  fashion,  from  enjoy- 
ing the  peculiar  atmosphere  of  this  astonishing  per- 
son's work,  will  be  found  reverting  to  him  con- 
stantly and  indiscriminately.  "  Great  Expecta- 
tions "  is  perhaps,  as  a  more  "  artistic  "  book  than 
the  rest,  the  most  fitted  of  them  all  to  entice  towards 
a  more  sympathetic  under  standing  of  his  mood,  those 


ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS  45 

who  are  held  from  reading  him  by  some  more  or 
less  accidental  reason.  The  most  characteristic 
thing  about  this  great  genius  is  the  power  he  pos- 
sesses of  breathing  palpable  life  into  what  is  often 
called  the  inanimate.  Like  Hans  Andersen,  the 
writer  of  fairy-stories,  and,  in  a  measure,  like  all 
children,  Dickens  endows  with  fantastic  spirituality 
the  most  apparently  dead  things  in  our  ordinary  en- 
vironment. 

His  imagination  plays  superb  tricks  with  such  ob- 
jects and  things,  touching  the  most  dilapidated  of 
them  with  a  magic  such  as  the  genius  of  a  great 
poet  uses,  when  dealing  with  nature  —  only  the 
"  nature  "  of  Dickens  is  made  of  less  lovely  matters 
than  leaves  and  flowers. 

The  wild  exaggerations  of  Dickens  —  his  reckless 
contempt  for  realistic  possibility  —  need  not  hinder 
us  from  enjoying,  apart  from  his  revelling  humor 
and  his  too  facile  sentiment,  those  inspired  out- 
bursts of  inevitable  truth,  wherein  the  inmost  iden- 
tity of  his  queer  people  stands  revealed  to  us.  His 
world  may  be  a  world  of  goblins  and  fairies,  but 
there  cross  it  sometimes  figures  of  an  arresting  ap- 
peal and  human  voices  of  divine  imagination. 
6 1.  Jane  Austen.  Pride  and  Prejudice. 

Jane  Austen's  delicate  and  ironic  art  will  remain 
unassailable  through  all  changes  of  taste  and  varie- 
ties of  opinion.  What  she  really  possesses  —  what 
might  be  called  the  clue  to  her  inimitable  secret  — 
is  nothing  less  than  the  power  of  giving  expression 
to  that  undying  ironic  detachment,  touched  with  a 
fine  malice  but  full  of  tender  understanding,  which 


46  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS 

all  women,  to  some  degree  or  other,  share,  and 
which  all  men,  to  some  degree  or  other,  suffer  from ; 
in  other  words,  the  terrible  and  beautiful  insight 
of  the  maternal  instinct.  The  clear  charm  of  her 
unequalled  style  —  a  style  quite  classical  in  its  econ- 
omy of  material  and  its  dignified  reserve  —  is  a 
charm  frequently  caught  in  the  wit  and  fine  malice 
of  one's  unmarried  aunts;  but  it  is,  none  the  less, 
the  very  epitome  of  maternal  humor.  As  a  creative 
realist,  giving  to  her  characters  the  very  body  and 
pressure  of  actual  life,  no  writer,  living  or  dead,  has 
surpassed  her.  Without  romance,  without  philos- 
ophy, without  social  theories,  without  pathological 
curiosity,  without  the  remotest  interest  in  "  Nature," 
she  has  yet  managed  to  achieve  a  triumphant  artis- 
tic success;  and  to  leave  an  impression  of  serene 
wisdom  such  as  no  other  woman  writer  has  equaled 
or  approached. 
62.  Emily  Bronte.  Wuthering  Heights. 

Of  all  the  books  of  all  the  Brontes,  this  one  is  the 
supreme  masterpiece.  Charlotte  has  genius  and  im- 
agination. She  has  passion  too.  But  there  is  a 
certain  demonic  violence  about  Emily  which  carries 
her  work  into  a  region  of  high  and  desperate  beauty 
forbidden  to  the  gentler  spirit  of  her  sister.  The 
love  of  Heathcliff  and  Catherine  breaks  the  bonds 
of  ordinary  sensual  or  sentimental  relationship  and 
hurls  itself  into  that  darker,  stranger,  more  un- 
earthly air,  wherein  one  hears  the  voices  of  the 
great  lovers ;  and  where  Sappho  and  Michaelangelo 
and  Swift  and  Shelley  and  Nietzsche  gasp  forth 
their  imprecations  and  their  terrible  ecstasies. 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  47 

Crude  and  rough  and  jagged  and  pitiless,  the  style 
of  this  astounding  book  seems  to  rend  and  tear, 
like  a  broken  saw,  at  the  very  roots  of  existence. 
In  some  curious  way,  as  in  Balzac  and  Dostoievsky, 
emotions  and  situations  which  have  the  tone  and 
mood  of  quite  gross  melodrama  are  so  driven  in- 
wards by  sheer  diabolical  intensity,  that  they  touch 
the  granite  substratum  of  what  is  eternal  in  human 
passion.  The  smell  of  rain-drenched  moors,  the  cry- 
ing of  the  wind  in  the  Scotch  firs,  the  long  lines 
of  black  rooks  drifting  across  the  twilight, —  these 
things  become,  in  the  savage  style  of  this  extraor- 
dinary girl,  the  very  symbols  and  tokens  of  the 
power  that  rends  her  spirit. 
63.  George  Meredith.  Harry  Richmond. 

"  Harry  Richmond  "  is  at  once  the  least  Meredithian 
and  the  best  of  all  Meredith's  books.  Meredith, 
though  to  a  much  less  degree  than  George  Eliot, 
is  one  of  those  pseudo-philosophic,  pseudo-ethical 
writers,  who  influence  a  generation  or  two  and  then 
seem  to  become  antiquated  and  faded. 
It  is  when  he  is  least  philosophical  and  least  moral- 
istic —  as  in  the  superbly  imaginative  figure  of  Rich- 
mond Roy  —  that  he  is  at  his  greatest.  There  is, 
throughout  his  work,  an  unpleasing  strain,  like  the 
vibration  of  a  rope  drawn  out  too  tight, —  a  strain 
and  a  tug  of  intellectual  intensity,  that  is  not  ful- 
filled by  any  corresponding  intellectual  wisdom. 
His  descriptions  of  nature,  in  his  poems,  as  well  as 
in  his  prose  works,  have  an  original  vigor  and  a 
pungent  tang  of  their  own;  but  the  twisted  violence 
of  their  introduction,  full  of  queer  jolts  and  jerks, 


48  ONE    HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS 

prevents  their  impressing  one  with  any  sense  of 
calm  or  finality.  They  are  too  aphoristic,  these 
passages.  They  are  too  clever.  They  smell  too 
much  of  the  lamp.  The  same  fault  may  be  re- 
marked in  the  rounding  off  of  the  Meredithian 
plots  where  one  is  so  seldom  conscious  of  the 
presence  of  the  "  inevitable  "  and  so  teased  by  the 
"  obstinate  questionings "  of  purely  mental  prob- 
lems. 

Reading  Henry  James  one  feels  like  a  wisp  of  straw 
floating  down  a  wide  smooth  river;  reading  Mere- 
dith one  is  flicked  and  flapped  and  beaten,  as  if  be- 
neath a  hand  with  a  flail. 

64.  Henry    James.    The    Ambassadors.    The    Tragic 
Muse.    The  Soft  Side.    The  Better  Sort.    The 
Wings  of  the  Dove.    The  Golden  Bowl. 
Henry  James  is  the  most  purely  "  artistic  "  as  he  is 
the  most  profoundly  "  intellectual  "  of  all  the  Euro- 
pean writers  of  our  age.     His  fame  will  steadily 
grow,  and  his  extraordinary  genius  will  more  and 
more  create  that  finer  taste  by  which  alone  he  can 
be  appreciated. 

No  novelist  who  has  ever  lived  has  "  taken  art "  so 
seriously.  But  it  is  art,  and  not  life,  he  takes 
seriously ;  and,  therefore,  along  with  his  methods  of 
elaborate  patience,  one  is  conscious  of  a  most  deli- 
cate and  whimsical  playfulness  —  sparing  literally 
nothing.  In  spite  of  his  beautiful  cosmopolitanism 
it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  at  bottom  Henry 
James  is  richly  and  wonderfully  American.  That 
tender  and  gracious  "penchant"  of  his  for  pure- 
souled  and  modest-minded  young  men,  for  their 


ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS  49 

high  resolves,  their  noble  renunciations,  their  touch- 
ing faith,  is  an  indication  of  how  much  he  has  ex- 
ploited—  in  the  completest  aesthetic  sense  —  the 
naive  puritanism  of  his  great  nation. 
In  regard  to  his  style  one  may  remark  three  main 
divergent  epochs;  the  first  closing  with  the  open- 
ing of  the  "  nineties,"  and  the  third  beginning  about 
the  year  1903.  Of  these  the  second  seems  to  the 
present  compiler  the  best;  being,  indeed,  more  in- 
tellectualized  and  subtle  than  the  first  and  less 
mannered  and  obscure  than  the  final  one.  The 
finest  works  he  produced  would  thus  be  found 
to  be  those  on  one  side  or  the  other  of  the  year 
1900. 

The  subtlety  of  Henry  James  is  a  subtlety  which  is 
caused  not  by  philosophical  but  by  psychological  dis- 
tinctions and  it  is  a  subtlety  which  enlarges  our  sym- 
pathy for  the  average  human  nature  of  middle  class 
people  to  a  degree  that  must,  in  the  very  deepest 
sense  of  the  word,  be  called  moral. 
The  wisdom  to  be  derived  from  him  is  all  of  a 
piece  with  the  pleasure  —  both  being  the  result  of 
a  fuller,  richer,  and  more  discriminating  conscious- 
ness of  the  tragic  complexity  of  quite  little  and  un- 
important characters.  To  a  real  lover  of  Henry 
James  the  greyest  and  least  promising  aspects  of 
ordinary  life  seem  to  hold  up  to  us  infinite  possibili- 
ties of  delicate  excitement.  It  is  indeed  out  of  ex- 
citement—  partly  intellectual  and  partly  aesthetic, 

—  that  his  great  effects  are  produced.     And  yet  the 
final  effect  is  always  one  of  resignation  and  calm 

—  as  with  all  the  supreme  masters. 


5O  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST     BOOKS 

70.  Thomas  Hardy.  Tess  of  the  D'Urbevilles.  The 
Return  of  the  Native.  The  Mayor  of  Caster- 
bridge.  Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd.  Wes- 
sex  Poems. 

Thomas  Hardy  remains  the  greatest  poet  and  novel- 
ist of  the  England  of  our  age.  His  poetry,  Wessex 
Poems,  Poems  of  Past  and  Present,  Time's  Laugh- 
ing-Stock, Satires  of  Circumstance,  make  up  the 
most  powerful  and  original  contribution  to  modern 
verse,  produced  recently,  either  in  England  or 
America.  Not  to  value  Hardy's  poetry  as  highly 
as  all  but  his  very  greatest  prose  is  to  betray  oneself 
as  having  missed  the  full  pregnancy  of  his  bitter 
and  lovely  wisdom. 

He  has,  like  Henry  James,  three  "manners"  or 
styles  —  the  first  containing  such  lighter,  friendlier 
work,  as  "  Life's  Little  Ironies,"  "  Under  a  Green- 
wood Tree,"  and  "The  Trumpet  Major"— the 
second  being  the  period  of  the  great  tragedies  which 
assume  the  place,  in  his  work,  of  "  Hamlet," 
"  Lear,"  "  Macbeth  "  and  "  Othello,"  in  the  work  of 
Shakespeare  —  the  third,  of  curious  and  imagina- 
tive interest,  expresses  in  quite  a  particular  way,  Mr. 
Hardy's  own  peculiar  point  of  view.  The  Well- 
Beloved,  Jude  the  Obscure,  and  the  later  poems 
would  belong  to  this  epoch. 

At  his  best  Hardy  is  a  novelist  second  to  none. 
His  style  has  a  grandeur,  a  distinction,  a  concentra- 
tion, which  we  find  neither  in  Balzac  nor  Dostoiev- 
sky. Not  to  appreciate  the  power  and  beauty  of  his 
manner,  when  his  real  inspiration  holds  him,  is  to 
confess  that  the  genuinely  classical  in  style  and  the 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  5! 

genuinely  pagan  in  feeling  has  no  meaning  for  you. 
No  English  writer,  whether  in  prose  or  poetry,  has 
ever  caught  so  completely  the  magic  of  the  earth 
and  the  quaint  humors,  tragical  and  laughable,  of 
those  who  live  inured  to  her  moods ;  who  live  with 
her  moroseness,  her  whimsicality,  her  vindictiveness, 
her  austerity,  her  evasive  grace. 
Mr.  Hardy's  clairvoyant  feeling  for  Nature  is,  how- 
ever, only  the  background  of  his  work.  He  is  no 
idyllic  posture-monger.  The  march  of  events  as 
they  drive  forward  the  primitive  earth-born  men 
and  women  of  Wessex,  thrills  one  with  the  same 
weight  of  accumulated  fatality,  as  —  the  compari- 
son is  tedious  and  pedantic  —  the  fortunes  of  the 
ill-starred  houses  of  Argos  and  Thebes.  One  pe- 
culiarity of  Mr.  Hardy's  method  must  finally  be 
mentioned,  as  giving  their  most  characteristic  quality 
to  these  formidable  scenes  —  I  mean  his  preference 
for  form  over  color.  Who  can  forget  those  deso- 
lately emphatic  human  protagonists  silhouetted  so 
austerely  along  the  tops  of  hills  and  against  the  per- 
spectives of  long  white  roads? 

75.  Joseph  Conrad.  Chance.  Lord  Jim.  Victory. 
Youth.  Almayer's  Folly.  Published  by  Dou~ 
bleday  Page  &  Co.  with  a  critical  monograph,  so 
admirably  written  (it  is  given  gratis)  by  Wilson 
Follet  that  one  longs  to  see  more  criticism  from 
such  an  accomplished  hand. 

Conrad's  work  —  and,  considering  his  foreign  ori- 
gin and  his  late  choice  of  English  as  a  medium  of 
expression,  it  is  no  less  than  an  astounding  achieve- 
ment—  is  work  of  the  very  highest  literary  and 


52  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

psychological  value.  It  is,  indeed,  as  Mr.  Follet 
says,  only  such  criticism  as  is  passionately  anxious 
to  prove  for  itself  the  true  "  romance  of  the  intel- 
lect "  that  can  hope  to  deal  adequately  with  such  an 
output.  The  background  of  Conrad's  books  is  pri- 
marily the  sea  itself ;  and  after  the  sea,  ships.  No 
one  has  indicated  the  extraordinary  romance  of  ships 
in  the  way  he  has  done  —  of  ships  in  the  open  sea, 
in  the  harbour,  at  the  wharf,  or  driven  far  up  some 
perilous  tropical  river. 

But  it  is  neither  the  sea  nor  the  tropical  recesses 
nor  the  sun-scorched  river-edges  of  his  backgrounds 
that  make  up  the  essence  of  romance  in  the  Conrad 
books.  This  is  found  in  nothing  less  than  the  mys- 
terious potencies  for  courage  and  for  fear,  for  good 
and  for  evil,  of  human  beings  themselves  —  of  hu- 
man beings  isolated  by  some  external  "  diablerie  " 
which  throws  every  feature  of  them  into  terrible  and 
baffling  relief. 

The  finest  and  deepest  effects  of  Conrad's  art  are 
always  found  when,  in  the  process  of  the  story,  some 
solitary  man  and  woman  encounter  each  other,  far 
from  civilization,  and  tearing  off,  as  it  were,  the 
mask  of  one  another's  souls,  are  confronted  by  a 
deeper  and  more  inveterate  mystery  —  the  eternal 
mystery  of  difference,  which  separates  all  men  born 
into  the  world  and  keeps  us  perpetually  alone.  In 
the  case  of  Heyst  and  Lena  —  of  Flora  de  Barral 
and  her  Captain  Anthony  —  of  Charles  and  Mrs. 
Gould  —  of  Aissa  and  Willems  —  of  Almayer's 
daughter  and  her  Malay  lover,  Mr.  Conrad  takes  up 
the  ancient  planetary  theme  of  the  loves  of  men  and 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  53 

women  and  throws  upon  it  a  sudden,  original,  and 
singularly  stimulating  light ;  a  light,  that  like  a  lan- 
tern carried  down  into  the  very  Cave  of  the  "  Moth- 
ers," throws  its  flickering  and  ambiguous  rays  over 
the  large,  dumb,  formless  shapes  —  the  primordial 
motives  of  human  hearts  —  which  grope  and 
fumble  in  that  thick  darkness. 
The  style  of  Conrad,  simpler  than  that  of  James, 
less  monumental  than  that  of  Hardy,  has  never- 
theless a  certain  forward-driving  impetus  hardly 
less  effective  than  these  more  famous  mediums  of 
expression.  "  Lord  Jim  "  is  perhaps  his  masterpiece 
and  may  be  regarded  as  the  most  interesting  book 
written  recently  in  our  language  with  the  exception 
of  Henry  James'  "Golden  Bowl."  For  sheer  ex- 
citement and  the  thrilling  sensation  of  delayed 
denouement  it  must  be  conceded  that  not  one  of  our 
classical  novelists  can  touch  Conrad.  "Victory" 
remains  an  absorbing  evidence  of  his  power  of  con- 
centrating at  one  and  the  same  moment  our  drama- 
tic and  our  psychological  interest. 

80.  Walter  Pater.  Marius  the  Epicurean.  Studies  in 
the  Renaissance.  Imaginary  Portraits.  Plato 
and  Platonism.  Gaston  de  Latour. 
Walter  Pater's  writings  are  more  capable  than  any 
in  our  list  of  offering,  if  approached  at  the  suitable 
hour  and  moment,  new  vistas  and  possibilities  both 
intellectual  and  emotional.  That  wise  and  massive 
egoism  taught  by  Goethe,  that  impassioned  "  liv- 
ing to  oneself  "  indicated  by  Stendhal,  find  in  Walter 
Pater  a  new  qualification  and  a  new  sanction. 
Himself  a  supreme  master  of  the  rare  and  exquisite 


54  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS 

in  style,  he  becomes,  for  those  who  really  under- 
stand him,  something  more  penetrating  and  insidious 
than  a  mere  personality.  He  becomes  an  atmos- 
phere, an  attitude,  a  tone,  a  temper  —  and  one  too 
which  may  serve  us  to  most  rich  and  recondite  pur- 
pose, as  we  wander  through  the  world  seeking  the 
excitement  and  consecration  of  impassioned  cults 
and  organized  discriminations. 
For  this  austere  and  elaborately  constructed  style 
of  his  is  nothing  less  than  the  palpable  expression 
of  his  own  discriminating  days;  the  wayfaring,  so 
self-consciously  and  scrupulously  guarded,  of  his 
own  fastidious  "  hedonism,"  seeking  its  elaborate 
satisfactions  among  the  chance-offered  occasions  of 
hour,  or  person  or  of  place. 

Walter  Pater  remains,  for  those  who  are  permitted 
to  feel  these  things,  the  one  who  above  all  others 
has  the  subtlest  and  most  stimulating  method  of 
approach  with  regard  to  all  the  great  arts,  and 
most  especially  with  regard  to  the  art  of  litera- 
ture. 

No  one,  after  reading  him,  can  remain  gross,  aca- 
demic, vulgar,  or  indiscriminate.  And,  with  the 
rest,  we  seem  to  be  aware  of  a  secret  attitude  not 
only  towards  art  but  towards  life  also,  to  miss  the 
key  to  which  would  be  to  fail  in  that  architecture 
of  the  soul  and  senses  which  is  the  object  of  the 
discipline  not  merely  of  the  aesthetic  but  of  the  re- 
ligious cult. 

For  the  supreme  initiation  into  which  we  are  led 
by  these  elaborate  and  patient  essays,  is  the  initia- 
tion into  the  world  of  inner  austerity,  which  makes 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  55 

its  clear-cut  and  passionate  distinctions  in  our  emo- 
tional as  well  as  in  our  intellectual  life. 
Everything,  without  exception,  as  we  read  Pater 
becomes  "  a  matter  of  taste  " ;  but  the  high  and  ex- 
clusive nature  of  this  taste,  to  which  no  sensations 
but  those  which  are  vulgar  and  common  are  for- 
bidden, is  itself  a  guarantee  of  the  gentleness  and 
delicacy  of  the  passions  evoked.  His  ultimate  phil- 
osophy seems  to  be  that  —  as  he  himself  has  de-r 
scribed  it  in  "  Marius," —  of  Aristippus  of  Cyrene ; 
but  this  "  undermining  of  metaphysic  by  means  of 
metaphysic  "  lands  him  in  no  mere  arid  agnosticism 
or  weary  emptiness  of  suspended  judgment;  but  in 
a  rich  and  imaginative  region  of  infinite  possibilities, 
from  the  shores  of  which  he  is  able  to  launch  forth 
at  will ;  or  to  gather  up  at  his  pleasure  the  delicate 
shells  strewn  upon  the  sand. 
85.  George  Bernard  Shaw.  Man  and  Superman. 

Mr.  Shaw  has  found  his  role  and  his  occupation 
very  happily  cut  out  for  him  in  the  unfailing  stu- 
pidity, not  untouched  by  a  sense  of  humor,  of  our 
Anglo-Saxon  democracy  in  England  and  America. 
In  Germany,  too,  there  seems  naivete  and  simplicity 
enough  to  be  still  entertained  by  these  mischievously 
whimsical  and  yet  portentously  moral  comedies.  It 
appears  however  that  the  civilization  for  which  Ra- 
belais and  Voltaire  wrote,  is  less  willing  to  acclaim 
as  an  extraordinary  genius  one  who  has  the  wit  to 
pierce  with  a  bodkin  the  idolatries  and  illusions  of 
such  pathetically  simple  people. 
Bernard  Shaw  takes  the  Universe  very  seriously. 
By  calling  it  the  Life-Force  he  permits  himself  to 


56  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS 

address  it  in  that  heroic  vein  reserved,  among  more 
ordinary  intelligencies,  for  anthropomorphic  deities. 
Bernard  Shaw's  sense  of  the  comic  draws  its  spirit 
from  the  contrast  between  clever  people  and  stupid 
people,  and  seems  to  appear  at  its  best  when  en- 
gaged in  upsetting  the  pseudo-historical,  pseudo- 
philosophical  illusions  of  Anglo-Saxons,  in  charm- 
ingly ridiculous  pantomimes,  which  the  redeeming 
humor  of  that  patient  race  has  just  intelligence 
enough  thoroughly  to  enjoy. 

If  he  were  himself  less  moralistically  earnest  the 
spice  of  the  jest  would  disappear.  His  humor  is 
not  universal  humor.  It  is  topical  humor;  and 
topical  humor  derives  its  point  from  moral  contrast, 
—  the  contrast  in  this  case  between  the  virtue  of 
Mr.  Shaw  and  the  vices  of  modern  society. 
"  Man  and  Superman  "  is  undoubtedly  his  most  in- 
teresting work  from  a  philosophical  point  of  view, 
but  his  later  plays  —  such  bewitching  farces  as 
"  Fanny's  First  Play/'  "  Androcles,"  and  "  Pygma- 
lion " —  seem  to  express  more  completely  than  any- 
thing else  that  rollicking  combative  roguishness 
which  is  his  most  characteristic  quality. 
86.  Gilbert  K.  Chesterton.  Orthodoxy. 

Mr.  Chesterton  may  congratulate  himself  upon  be- 
ing the  only  man  of  letters  in  England  who  has  had 
the  originality  or  the  insight  or  the  temperamental 
courage  to  adopt  a  definitely  reactionary  philosophy ; 
whereas  in  France  we  have  Huysmans,  Barres, 
Bourget,  Bordeaux,  and  many  others,  whose  per- 
suasive and  romantic  role  it  is  to  prop  up  tottering 
altars;  in  England  we  have  only  Mr.  Chesterton. 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  57 

That  is  doubtless  why  it  is  necessary  for  him  to  ex- 
aggerate his  paradoxes  so  extravagantly;  and  also 
why  he  is  so  important  and  so  dear  to  the  hearts 
of  intelligent  clergymen. 

Mr.  Chesterton's  grand  philosophical  "  coup  "  is  a 
simple  and  effective  one  —  the  turning  of  every- 
thing, complacently  and  hilariously,  upside  down. 
One  has  the  salutary  amusement  in  reading  him  of 
visualizing  the  Universe  in  the  posture  of  a  Gargan- 
tuan baby,  "  prepared  "  for  a  sound  smacking.  Mr. 
Chesterton  himself  is  the  chief  actor  in  this  per- 
formance and  wonderful  pyrotechnic  stars  leap  into 
space  as  its  happy  result. 

Mr.  Chesterton  has  his  own  peculiar  "  religion  " — 
a  sort  of  Chelsea  Embankment  Catholicism,  in 
which,  in  place  of  Pontifical  Encyclicals,  we  have 
Punch  and  Judy  jokes,  and  in  place  of  Apostolic 
Doctrine  we  have  umbrellas,  lamp-posts,  electric- 
signs  and  prestidigitating  clerics. 
Mr.  Chesterton  is  never  more  entertaining,  never 
more  entirely  at  ease,  than  when  turning  one  or 
other  of  the  really  noble  and  tragic  figures  of  hu- 
man intellect  into  preposterous  "  Aunt  Sallies " 
at  whose  battered  heads  he  can  fling  the  turnips 
and  potatoes  of  the  Average  Man's  average  sus- 
picion, dipped  for  that  purpose  in  a  fiery  sort  of 
brandy  of  his  own  whimsical  wit.  If  we  don't  be- 
come "  like  little  children " ;  in  other  words  like 
jovial,  middle-aged  swashbucklers,  and  protest  our 
belief  in  Flying  Pigs,  Pusses  in  Boots,  Jacks  on 
the  top  of  Beanstalks,  Old  Women  who  live  in 
Shoes,  Fairies,  Fandangos,  Prester  Johns,  and  Blue 


58  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

Devils,  there  is  no  hope  for  us  and  we  are  con- 
demned to  a  dreadful  purgatory  of  pedantic  and 
atheistic  dullness,  along  with  Li  Hung  Chang, 
George  Eliot,  Herbert  Spencer  and  other  heretics 
whose  view  of  the  Dogma  of  the  Immortality  of  the 
Soul  differs  from  that  of  Mr.  Chesterton. 
87.  Oscar  Wilde.  Intentions.  The  Importance  of 

Being  Earnest.     De  Profundis. 
"  Intentions "  is  perhaps  the  most  original  of  all 
Wilde's  remarkable  works. 

His  supreme  art,  as  he  himself  well  knew,  was, 
after  all,  the  art  of  conversation.  One  might  even 
put  it  that  his  greatest  achievement  in  life  was  just 
the  achievement  of  being  brazenly  and  shamelessly 
what  he  naturally  was  —  especially  in  conversation. 
To  call  him  a  "  poseur  "  with  the  implication  that 
he  pretended  or  assumed  a  manner,  were  just  as  ab- 
surd as  to  call  a  tiger  striped  with  the  implication 
that  the  beast  deliberately  "  put  on  "  that  mark  of 
distinction. 

If  it  is  a  pose  to  enjoy  the  sensation  of  one's  own 
spontaneous  gestures,  Wilde  was  indeed  the  worst  of 
pretenders.  But  the  stupid  gravity  of  many  gen- 
erals, judges  and  archbishops  is  not  more  natural 
to  them  than  his  exquisite  insolence  was  to  him. 
Below  the  wit  and  provocative  persiflage  of  "  In- 
tentions "  there  is  a  deep  and  true  conception  of  the 
nature  of  art  —  a  conception  which  might  well  serve 
as  the  "  philosophy  "  of  much  of  the  most  interest- 
ing and  arresting  of  modern  work. 
Wilde's  extraordinary  charm  largely  depends  upon 
something  invincibly  boyish  and  youthful  in  him. 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  59 

His  personality,  as  he  himself  says,  has  become 
almost  symbolic  —  symbolic,  that  is,  of  a  certain 
shameless  and  beautiful  defiance  of  the  world,  ex- 
pressed in  an  unconquerable  insolence  worthy  of  the 
very  spirit  of  hard,  brave,  flagrant  youth. 
"  The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest "  is  perhaps  the 
gayest,  least  responsible,  and  most  adorably  witty  of 
all  English  comedies ;  just  as  "  Salome  "  is  the  most 
richly  colored  and  smoulderingly  sensual  of  all 
modern  tragedies.  One  actually  touches  with  one's 
fingers  the  f easting-cups  of  the  Tetrarch;  and  the 
passion  of  the  daughter  of  Herodias  hangs  round 
one  like  an  exotic  perfume. 

In  "  De  Profundis  "  we  sound  the  sea-floor  of  a 
quite  open  secret ;  the  secret  namely  of  the  invincible 
attraction  of  a  certain  type  of  artist  and  sensualist 
towards  the  "  white  Christ "  who  came  forth  from 
the  tomb  where  he  had  been  laid,  with  precious  oint- 
ments about  him,  by  the  Arimathsean. 
In  "  The  Soul  of  Man  "  another  symbolic  reversion 
displays  itself  —  that  reversion  namely  of  the  soul 
of  the  true  artist  towards  the  revolutionary  organi- 
zation which,  along  with  insensitiveness  and  bru- 
tality, proposes  to  abolish  ugliness  also. 
The  name  of  Oscar  Wilde  thus  becomes  a  name 
"  to  conjure  with  "  and  a  fantastic  beacon-fire  to 
which  those  "  oppressed  and  humiliated  "  may  re- 
pair and  take  new  heart. 
90.  Rudyard  Kipling.  The  Jungle  Book. 

Whatever  one  may  feel  about  Mr.  Kipling's  other 
work,  about  his  rampagious  imperialism,  his  self- 
conscious  swashbucklerism,  his  pipe-clay  and  his 


6O  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

journalism,  his  moralistic  breeziness  and  his  patron- 
age of  the  "  white  man's  burden,"  one  cannot  help 
admitting  that  the  Jungle-Book  is  one  of  the  im- 
mortal children's  tales  of  the  world. 
In  spite  of  the  somewhat  priggish  introduction, 
even  here,  of  what  might  be  called  his  Anglo-Saxon 
propaganda,  the  Jungle-Book  carries  one  further,  it 
almost  seems,  and  more  convincingly,  into  the  very 
heart  and  inwards  of  beast-life  and  wood-magic,  than 
any  other  work  ever  written.  The  figures  of  these  ani- 
mals are  quite  Biblical  in  their  emphatic  picturesque- 
ness,  and  never  has  the  romance  of  these  spotted  and 
striped  aboriginals,  in  their  primordial  struggles  for 
food  and  water,  been  more  thrillingly  conveyed. 
Every  scene,  every  situation,  brands  itself  upon  the 
memory  as  perhaps  nothing  else  in  literature  does  ex- 
cept the  stories  in  the  Old  Testament.  The  best  of  all 
children's  books  — "  Grimm's  Fairy  Tales  "  itself 
—  takes  no  deeper  hold  upon  the  youthful  mind. 
Mr.  Kipling's  genius  which  in  his  other  work  is  con- 
stantly "  dropping  bricks  "  as  the  expressive  phrase 
has  it,  and  running  amuck  through  strenuous  banali- 
ties, rises  in  the  Jungle-Book  to  heights  of  poetic  and 
imaginative  suggestion  which  will  give  him  an  un- 
dying position  among  the  great  writers  of  our  race. 
91.  Charles  L.  Dodgson.  Alice  in  Wonderland.  The 

edition  with  the  original  illustrations. 
It  would  be  ridiculous  to  compile  a  list  of  a  hundred 
best  books  and  leave  out  this  one.     Lack  of  space 
alone  prevents  us   from  including  "  Through  the 
Looking  Glass  "  too. 
"  Alice  "  is  after  all  as  much  of  a  classic  now  and 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  6l 

by  the  same  right,  the  right  of  a  universal  appeal, 
to  every  type  of  child,  as  Mother  Goose  of  the 
Nursery  Rhymes.  She  had  only  to  appear  —  this 
slender-legged,  straight-haired,  Early-Victorian  lit- 
tle prude,  to  enter  at  once  the  inmost  arcana  of  the 
temple  of  art.  The  book  is  a  singular  evidence  of 
what  the  power  of  a  desperate  devotion  can  do  — 
a  devotion  like  this  of  Mr.  Dodgson  to  all  little  girls 
—  when  a  certain  whimsical  genius  belongs  to  the 
possessed  by  it. 

The  creator  of  Alice  has  really  done  nothing  but 
permit  his  absorbing  worship  of  many  demure  little 
maids  to  focus  and  concentrate  itself  into  an  almost 
incredible  transformation  of  what  was  the  intrinsic 
nature  of  the  writer  into  what  was  the  intrinsic 
nature  of  the  "  written-about." 
The  author  of  this  book  has  indeed,  so  to  speak, 
eluded  the  limitations  of  his  own  skin,  and  by  the 
magic  of  his  love  for  little  girls  has  passed  —  car- 
rying his  grown-up  cleverness  with  him  —  actually 
into  the  little  girl's  inmost  consciousness.  The  book 
might  be  quite  as  witty  as  it  is  and  quite  as  amus- 
ing but  it  would  not  carry  for  us  that  peculiar  "  per- 
fume in  the  mention,"  that  provocative  enchantment, 
if  it  were  not  much  more  —  Oh,  so  much  more  — 
than  merely  amusing.  The  thousand  and  one  re- 
actions, impressions,  intimations,  of  a  little  girl's 
consciousness,  are  reproduced  here  with  a  faithful- 
ness that  is  absolutely  startling.  What  really  makes 
the  transformation  complete  is  the  absence  in 
"  Alice  "  of  that  half-comic  sententious  priggishness 
which,  as  soon  as  we  have  ceased  to  be  children,  we 


62  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

find  so  curiously  irritating  in  Kingsley's  "  Water 
Babies." 

92.  John  Galsworthy.    The  Country  House.     The  Man 

of  Property.     Fraternity. 

John  Galsworthy  is  almost  alone  among  modern 
writers  in  the  possession  of  a  genius,  which  in  the 
most  exact  sense  of  that  admirable  word,  can  only 
be  described  as  the  genius  of  a  gentleman.  It  is  a 
style  singularly  sensitive,  a  little  vibrant  perhaps 
sometimes,  and  so  tense  as  to  become  attenuated,  but 
of  a  most  rare  and  wistful  beauty.  His  humor 
which  is  his  weakest  point  is  a  thing  of  almost  femi- 
nine perceptions  but  quaintly  pliable,  as  the  sense 
of  humor  in  women  often  is,  to  an  odd  strain  of 
peevish  extravagance. 

The  chivalrous  nobility  of  Mr.  Galsworthy's  habitual 
mood  is  at  once  the  cause  of  certain  fragilities  and 
betrayals  in  the  mass  and  weight  of  his  art  and 
the  cause  of  the  indignant  pity  which  evokes  some 
of  his  finest  touches. 

It  seems  to  irritate  his  nerves  almost  to  frenzy  to 
contemplate  the  shackles  and  fetters  with  which, 
whether  in  the  domestic  or  social  or  legal  world,  the 
free  spirits  of  men  and  women  are  bound  down  and 
imprisoned. 

The  touching  figure  of  Mrs.  Pendyce  in  the  "  Coun- 
try House  " —  the  tragic  figure  of  Irene  Soames 
Forsyte  in  the  "  Man  of  Property  " —  the  pitiful  fig- 
ure of  the  little  Model  in  "  Fraternity  "—  have  all 
something  of  the  same  quality. 

95.  W.  Somerset  Maugham.     Of  Human  Bondage. 
In  this  remarkable  book  Mr.  W.  Somerset  Maugham 


ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS  63 

surpasses  by  a  long  distance  the  average  novels  of 
recent  appearance.  The  portion  of  the  book  which 
deals  with  Paris,  especially  with  that  mad  poet 
there,  who  expounds  the  philosophy  of  the  "  Pat- 
tern," is  as  suggestive  a  piece  of  literature  as  any 
we  have  seen  for  half  a  dozen  years. 
The  passage  towards  the  end  of  the  book  on  the 
subject  of  the  genius  of  El  Greco  is  also  profoundly 
interesting;  and  the  sentences  which  comment  so 
gravely  and  beautifully  upon  the  cry  of  the  Christ, 
"  Father,  forgive  them ;  they  know  not  what  they 
do,"  have  a  rare  and  most  moving  power. 
96.  Gilbert  Cannan.  Round  the  Corner. 

"  Round  the  Corner  "  is  perhaps  Mr.  Cannan's  best 
book  but  "  Young  Earnest "  and  "  Old  Mole  "  are 
also  curious  and  interesting  volumes. 
Mr.  Cannan  is  as  typical  a  modern  writer  as  could 
be  found  anywhere.  And  yet  modernity  is  not  his 
only  charm.  He  has  genuine  psychological  insight 
and  though  this  insight  comes  in  flashes  and  is  not 
continuous  it  often  gives  an  original  twist  to  his 
characters  which  helps  to  make  them  strangely  con- 
vincing and  appealing.  "  Round  the  Corner  "  is  a 
genuine  masterpiece.  It  is  the  history  of  the  most 
charming  and  touching  clergyman  described  in  all 
English  fiction  since  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield ;  and  the 
massive,  solid  manner  in  which  the  story  is  con- 
structed, the  vigor  and  reality  of  the  interplay  of  the 
various  members  of  Francis'  family,  the  admirable 
portrait  of  the  mother,  the  grand  and  solemn  close  of 
the  book,  make  it  one  of  the  most  powerful  works  of 
fiction  England  has  produced  during  the  last  decade. 


64  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS 

Now  and  again  —  and  what  praise  could  go  further  ? 
—  there  are  little  touches  of  clear-cut  realism,  of 
that  kind  which  has  a  mystical  background,  which 
actually  suggest  some  of  the  lighter  and  more  idyllic 
work  of  Goethe  himself.  The  book  has  genuine 
wisdom  in  it,  of  a  sort  superior  to  any  philosophical 
system,  and  one  feels  at  the  close  the  tonic  and 
soothing  effect  of  a  powerful  moral  influence,  sweet- 
ening and  refining  one's  general  reaction  towards 
life. 
97.  Vincent  O'Sullivan.  The  Good  Girl.  Published  by 

Dutton  &  Co. 

This  admirable  work  of  art  is  not  known  as  well 
as  it  deserves  either  in  England  or  America.  It  is 
a  work  of  genius  in  every  sense  of  that  word,  and 
it  produces  on  the  mind  that  curious  sense  of  com- 
pleteness and  finality  which  only  such  works  pro- 
duce. 

Mr.  L.  U.  Wilkinson  —  himself  a  writer  of  power- 
ful achievement— says  of  "The  Good  Girl":  "It 
does  what  I  have  always  desired  should  be  done; 
it  reduces  '  atmosphere '  and  '  nature '  to  their 
proper  subordinate  place.  It  wastes  no  energy.  It 
focusses  one's  intellect  and  one's  emotion.  It 
creates  characters  who  resemble  none  others  in  fic- 
tion. It  is  imaginative  realism  of  the  highest  level 
of  excellence." 

The  complex  figure  of  Vendred,  the  hero  of  the 
story,  the  evasive  provocative  Mona  Lisa-like  por- 
trait of  Mrs.  Dover,  the  extraordinary  and  stimu- 
lating art  with  which  her  husband  is  described,  the 
agitating  and  tragic  appeal  made  to  us  by  Vendred's 


ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS  65 

child-wife,  the  unfortunate  Louise  —  all  these  to- 
gether make  up  one  of  the  most  absorbing  and  un- 
forgettable impressions  we  have  received  for  many 
years. 

Of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Dover  in  their  relation  to  one 
another  the  following  passage  reverberates  through 
one's  mind :  — "  They  would  sit  opposite  one  another 
silently,  criticising  with  a  drastic  pitiless  criticism. 
This  in  itself  showed  where  they  had  arrived;  for 
faith  has  to  be  shaken  before  there  is  room  for 
criticism,  and  if  love  survives  the  criticism  of  lov- 
ers, it  is  altogether  different  from  the  love  they 
began  with.  Lovers  can  be  almost  anything  they 
choose  to  each  other  and  still  be  in  love,  but  they 
cannot  be  critical.  That  is  blighting." 
Perhaps  the  most  tragic  thing  in  the  book  is  the  let- 
ter written  by  Louise  to  Vendred  when  the  luckless 
child  discovers  her  husband's  intrigue  with  her 
mother :  — "  I  came  to  you  in  the  middle  of  the 
night  last  night  because  I  was  afraid  of  the  wind. 
The  fire  was  burning  and  I  saw.  I  am  gone,  you 
will  never  see  me  again." 

The  last  scenes  of  the  unfortunate  girl's  life  —  in- 
directly described  by  the  ruffian  who  got  possession 
of  her  in  Paris  —  produce  on  the  mind  that  sicken- 
ing sense  of  the  wanton  stupidity  of  the  Universe 
which  fills  one  with  hopeless  pity. 
The  author  of  this  book  must  have  a  noble  and 
formidable  soul. 
98.  Oliver  Onions.     The  Story  of  Louie. 

"  The  Story  of  Louie  "  is  the  last  and  finest  volume 
of  an  astonishing  trilogy  —  the  first  two  volumes  of 


66  ONE     HUNDRED    BEST    BOOKS 

which  are  named  respectively  "  In  Accordance  with 
the  Evidence  "  and  "  The  Debit  Account." 
The  mere  fact  that  in  the  midst  of  our  contemptible 
hatred  of  "  long  books  "  this  excellent  trilogy  should 
have  appeared,  is  an  indication  of  the  daring  and 
originality  of  Mr.  Oliver  Onions. 
.Mr.  Onions  is  one  of  the  few  modern  writers  — 
along  with  Hardy,  Conrad  and  James  —  who  is  en- 
tirely untouched  by  political  or  ethical  propagand- 
ism.  His  trilogy  is  a  genuinely  creative  work  of  a 
high  and  exclusive  order.  The  manner  in  which,  to 
quote  Mr.  L.  U.  Wilkinson  again  — "  the  whole 
prospect  is,  as  it  were,  strained  through  the  charac- 
ter of  one  or  other  of  the  leading  persons  is  in  itself 
a  proof  of  this  writer's  fine  artistic  instinct."  The 
way  in  which  all  the  leading  persons  in  the  book 
stand  out  in  clear  relief  and  indelibly  print  them- 
selves on  the  mind  is  evidence  of  the  value  of  this 
method.  And  what  masterly  irony  in  the  contrast 
between  "  Evie "  for  instance  as  Jeffries  sees  her 
and  "  Evie  "  as  she  is  seen  by  her  rival  Louie ! 
Nowhere  in  literature,  except  in  Dostoievsky,  has 
the  ferocious  struggle  of  two  women  over  a  man 
been  so  savagely  and  truly  portrayed  as  in  the 
great  scene  in  "  Louie  "  between  that  young  woman 
and  Evie  when  the  latter  visits  her  in  her 
rooms. 

Oliver  Onions'  humor  has  that  large  and  vigorous 
expansiveness,  touched  with  something  almost  sar- 
donic, which  we  associate  with  some  of  the  very 
greatest  writers.  There  is  always  present  in  his 
work  a  certain  free  sweep  of  imagination  which 


ONE     HUNDRED    BEST     BOOKS  67 

deals  masterfully  and  suggestively  with  all  manner 
of  sordid  material. 
99.  Arnold  Bennett.     Clayhanger. 

"  Clayhanger  "  with  its  sequels,  "  Hilda  Lessways  " 
and  "  These  Twain,"  makes  up  an  imposing  and  con- 
vincing trilogy  of  middle-class  life  in  the  English 
Pottery  Towns.  To  these  books  should  be  added 
"  Old  Wives'  Tale,"  "  Anna  of  the  Five  Towns  " 
and  all  the  others  among  this  writer's  works  which 
deal  with  these  Pottery  places  he  knows  so  superbly 
well. 

Outside  the  Five  Towns  Mr.  Bennett  loses  some- 
thing of  the  power  of  his  touch.  He  is  an  interest- 
ing example  of  a  writer  with  a  definite  "  milieu  " 
out  of  whose  happy  security  he  is  always  ill-advised 
to  stray. 

But  within  his  own  region  he  is  a  powerful  master. 
No  one  in  modern  English  fiction  has  treated  so 
creatively  and  illuminatingly  the  least  interesting 
and  least  romantic  strata  of  human  society  which 
is  perhaps  to  be  found  in  the  whole  world. 
And  yet  he  endows  this  paralyzing  bourgeoisie  with 
astonishing  life.  One  turns  back  from  much  more 
exciting  literature  to  these  ignorant,  conceited,  re- 
stricted and  undistinguished  people. 
One  turns  back  to  them  because  Mr.  Bennett  shows 
one  the  tragic  humanity,  eternally  and  mysteriously 
fascinating,  to  be  found  beneath  these  vulgar  and 
unlovely  exteriors.  Nor  when  it  conies  to  the  prob- 
lem of  sex  itself  is  this  writer  less  of  a  master. 
Never  has  the  undying  conflict,  the  world-old  strug- 
gle, between  those  who,  in  the  Catullian  phrase, 


68  ONE     HUNDRED     BEST     BOOKS 

"  love  and  hate  "  at  the  same  time,  been  more  con- 
vincingly brought  into  the  light  than  in  the  rela- 
tions between  these  uninteresting  but  strangely  ap- 
pealing people. 

Arnold  Bennett's  knowledge  of  the  Five  Towns 
gives  to  his  work  a  background  of  significant  con- 
gruity  whose  interaction  upon  the  characters  of  his 
plots  has  the  same  kind  of  weight  and  portentous- 
ness  as  the  interaction  of  Nature  in  the  books  of 
Mr.  Hardy. 

Such  a  background  may  be  in  itself  materialistic 
and  sordid,  but  in  the  imaginative  reaction  it  pro- 
duces upon  the  characters  it  has  the  genuine  poetic 
quality. 
100.  Oxford  Book  of  English  Verse. 

This  is  by  far  the  best  anthology  of  English  poetry, 
its  only  rival  being  the  first  series  of  Palgrave's 
Golden  Treasury.  Those  interested  in  the  work  of 
more  recent  poets  and  in  the  latest  poetic  "  move- 
ments "  in  England  and  America  would  be  wise  to 
turn  to  Putnam's  "  Georgian  Poetry  " —  two  series 
—  and  "  The  New  Poetry  "  by  Harriet  Monroe,  pub- 
lished by  Macmillan.  The  compiler  of  this  selec- 
tion of  books  feels  himself  that  the  most  poetical 
among  the  younger  poets  of  our  age  is  Walter  de  la 
Mare  and  of  the  poems  which  Mr.  De  la  Mare  has 
so  far  written,  he  finds  the  best  to  be  those  ex- 
traordinary and  magical  verses  entitled  "  The 
Listeners  "  which  seem  to  come  nearer  to  giving  a 
voice  to  the  unutterable  margin  of  our  days  than 
any  others  written  within  the  last  ten  years. 


The  following  pages  contain  an  alphabetical  list  by 
author  of  the  One  Hundred  Best  Books,  also  the  titles 
of  other  books  recommended  in  the  text  by  Mr.  Powys. 
The  numerals  following  the  titles  of  the  books  refer  to 
the  number  given  the  books  in  this  list,  while  the  prices 
attached  thereto  are  the  Publisher's  list  prices.  If  sent 
by  mail  or  express  it  is  necessary  to  add  the  cost, 
which  is  usually  about  10  per  cent,  of  the  price. 

G.    ARNOLD     SHAW,    PUBLISHER 
GRAND    CENTRAL   TERMINAL,    NEW    YORK 


INDEX  WITH  PRICES 

OF 
RECOMMENDED  EDITIONS 

OF 
JOHN  COWPER  POWYS'  LIST 

OF 

ONE  HUNDRED  BEST  BOOKS 
And  Other  Books  Mentioned  In  the  Text 

Binding  and 

price 
Author  Title  Leather  Cloth 

Artzibasheff   Sanine  (52) $i-35 

Artzibasheff  Breaking  Point  1.40 

v/Austen,  Jane *Pride  and  Prejudice  (61) $1.25          .75 

Balzac,  Honore  de*Lost  Illusions  (29)  Centenary  ed  1.35 

^-Balzac,  Honore  de*Cousin  Bette  (30)  Centenary  ed ..  1.35 

•^Balzac,  Honore  de*Old  Goriot  (31)  Centenary  ed. .  1.35 


Bennett,  Arnold 
Bennett,  Arnold 
Bennett,  Arnold 
r  Bennett,  Arnold 
Bennett,  Arnold 
Bronte,  Emily  . , 
Bourget,  Paul  . . 


.Clayhanger  (99) 

,  Hilda  Lessways 

,  These  Twain   

,Old  Wives'  Tale 

.Anna  of  the  Five  Towns. 
*  Withering  Heights  (62) 


-50 
•50 
•50 
•50 

.20 

.Le  Disciple  (38) .75 

Browne,  Sir  Thos.*Religio  Medici  and  Urn   Burial 

(n)  in  Scott  Library .40 

Browne,  Sir  Thos.*Religio  (Golden  Treasury  Series)  i.oo 

Cannan,  Gilbert  .  .Round  the  Corner  (96) 1.35 

Cannan,  Gilbert  .  .Young  Earnest  1.35 

Cannan,  Gilbert  . .  Old  Mole 1.35 

Catullus   Loeb  Library  Edition  (5) 2.00        1.50 

*  Cervantes *Don  Quixote   (27)   trans.  W.  J. 

Jarvis   2.00 

Carroll,  Lewis  .   .Alice  in  Wonderland  (91) i.oo 


-  Carroll,  Lewis 


Chesterton,  G.  K.. Orthodoxy  (86)    1.50 


Conrad,  Joseph 

v.  Conrad,   Joseph 

Conrad,  Joseph 


. Thro  the  Looking  Glass i.oo 


.Chance  (75)  1.50 

.  Lord  Jim   (76) 1.50 

.  Victory  (77)  1.50 

70 


INDEX  71 


Binding  and 

price 
Author  Title  Leather  Cloth 

Conrad,  Joseph  . .  Youth  (78)  1.50 

Conrad,  Joseph  . .  Almayer's  Folly  (79) 1.35 

.-Dante   .Divine  Comedy  (6) .  Temple  Clas- 
sics, 3  vols 1.35 

D'Annunzio,  G.  . .  The  Flame  of  Life  (40) 1.50 

D'Annunzio,  G.  .  .The  Triumph  of  Death  (41) 1.50 

de  la  Mare,  Walter .  .The  Listeners 1.20 

Dickens,  Charles.  .*Great  Expectations  (60),  Oxford 

Edition     .75 

Dickens,  Charles.  .*Great  Expectations,  Oxford  Red 

Venetian    1.25 

Dickens,  Charles.  .*Great  Expectations,  India  paper, 

Lambskin 1.75 

^Dostoievsky,  F.  ..*Crime  and  Punishment,  trans.  C. 

Garnett   (42)    1.50 

t  Dostoievsky,  F.  ..*The  Idiot  (43),  C.  Garnett 1.50 

,   Dostoievsky,  F.  . .  The  Brothers  Karamazov  (44)  C. 

Garnett 1.50 

Dostoievsky,  F.  ..The  Insulted  and  Injured  (45)  C. 

Garnett 1.50 

•^Dostoievsky,  F.  ..The  Ppssessed  (46)  C.  Garnett...  1.50 

Dreiser,  Theodore. The  Titan  (26)   1.40 

rson,  R.  W... Essays   (23),  first  and  second  se- 
ries in  one  volume.     Cambridge 

Classics  Edition .90 

Euripides  The  Bacchae  (3),  trans,  by  Gilbert 

Murray .65 

France,  Anatole  .  .The  Elm  Tree  on  the  Mall  (34)   .  1.75 

^France,  AnatcJe  .  .The  Opinions  of  Jerome  Coignard 

France,  Anatole  . .  My  Friend's  Book   (36)    1.75 

Galsworthy,  John. The  Country  House  (92) 1.35 

Galsworthy,  John. The  Man  of  Property  (93) 1.35 

Galsworthy,  John.  Fraternity  (94)   1.35 

Georgian  Poetry. .  1911/1912 1.50 

Georgian  Poetry. .  1913/1914     1.50 

v"Goethe    *  Faust  (12*)  trans,  by  Bayard  Tay- 
lor      1.25 

v/Goethe    *Wilhelm  Meister   (13)   trans,  by 

Carlyle   1.25 

../Goethe    Goethe's  Conversations  with  Eck- 

ejman  (14)   1.2*5 

Gourmont,  Remy  de .  A  Night  in  the  Luxembourg  (37)  1.50 

Gorki,  Maxim   . . .  Foma  Gordyeeff  (50) i.oo 

t/Hardy,  Thomas  .  .Tess  of  the  D'Urbevilles  (70) 1.50 


72  INDEX 


Binding  and 

price 

Author  Title  Leather  Cloth 

Thomas  ..The  Return  of  the  Native  (71). ..  1.50 

Hardy,  Thomas  ..The  Mayor  of  Casterbridge  (72).  1.50 

Hardy,  Thomas  ..  Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd  (73)  1.50 

Hardy,  Thomas  . .  Wessex  Poems  (74) 1.85 

Hardy,  Thomas  ..Poems  of  Past  and  Present 1.60 

Hardy,  Thomas  ..Satires  of  Circumstances 1.50 

Hauptmann The  Fool  in  Christ,  (20) 1.50 

Heine   Prose    works    and    "Confessions" 

(18),  Scott  Library .40 

Heine   Life  of — Great  Writers  Series ...  .40 

Horace  *Odes   (4)   prose  translation  ....  1.25 

Hugo,  Victor *The  Toilers  of  the  Sea  (28) i.oo 

Homer    *The  Odyssey,    (2)    Butcher  and 

Lang .80 

VIbsen *The  Wild  Duck  (21)  i.oo 

James,  Henry The  Ambassadors  (64)  2.00 

James,  Henry The  Tragic  Muse  (65)  2  vols.  each  1.25 

James,  Henry  ....The  Soft  Side  (66) 1.50 

Jimes,  Henry The  Better  Sort  (67) 1.35 

imes,  Henry The  Wings  of  a  Dove  (68)  2  vols.  2.25 

imes,  Henry The  Golden  Bowl  (69)  2  vols 2.25 

r  ipling,  Rudyard. The  Jungle  Book  (90) 1.50 

v£amb,  Charles  ...*Essays  of  Elia  (55)  Eversley  Ed  1.50 
^Masters,  Edgar  Lee.  .Spoon  River  Anthology  (25)  ..  1.50        1.25 

j/Maugham,   W.   Somerset.  .Of  Human  Bondage  (95)  1.50 
Maupassant,  Guy  de. Madame  Tellier's  Establishment 

(32')   paper  .., .40 

Meredith,  George.,  Harry  Richmond  (65)  Pocketed..  i.oo 

Milton   (10) Eversley  Edition  (or*),  3  vols.  set  4.50 

Monroe,  Harriet  .  The  New  Poetry 1.50 

•Nietzsche,  F Zarathustra  (15)  2.00 

Nietzsche,  F The  Joyful  Wisdom  (16) 1.60 

•Nietzsche,  F Ecce  Homo  (17) 2.00 

Nietzsche,  F Commentary  by  Lichtenberger. . . .  1.50 

Nietzsche,  F Life  of  by  Daniel  Halevy,  trans.. .  1.25 

Onions,  Oliver  . .  .The  Story  of  Louie  (98) 1.25 

Onions,  Oliver  ...In  Accordance  with  the  Evidence.  1.25 

Onions,  Oliver  . . .  The  Debit  Account 1.25 

O'Sullivan, Vincent.  .The  Good  Girl  (97) 1.35 

Oxford  Book  of  English  Verse    (100),  crown  8  vo  2.00 

Oxford  Book  of  English  Verse,  India  Paper  Edition.  2.75 

Palgrave Golden  Treasury,  First  Series*. .  ijoo 

^ater,  Walter  . ..  .Marius  the  Epicurean  (80),  2  vols.  4.00 

•/Tater,  Walter Studies  in  the  Renaissance  (81)  . .  2.00 

Pater,  Walter Imaginary  Portraits  (82) 2.00 


INDEX  73 


Binding  and 

price 
Author  Title  Leather  Cloth 

w/Pater,  Walter Plato  and  Platonism  (83) 2.00 

Pater,  Walter  ....  Gastpn  de  Latour  (84) 2.00 

Rabelais (7)  Edition  with  Dore  Illustrations.  .Rare 

Selection   in  French   Classics   for 

English   Readers'   Series   1.25 

xRolland,  Remain.  .Jean   Christophe    (39)    (trans.  G. 

Cannan),  3  vols 4.50 

Scott,  Sir  Walter. *Guy  Mannering   (56),  Dryburgh 

Edition 1.25 

Scott,  Sir  Walter. *Bride  of  Lammermoor   (57) 1.25 

Scott,  Sir  Walter.  *Heart  of  Midlothian  (58)   1.25 

Shakespeare    Troilus  and  Cressida  (9),  Temple   .55  .35 

Shakespeare    Measure  for  Measure,  Temple...    .55  .35 

Shakespeare   Timon  of  Athens,  Temple  Edition.     .55          .35 

•Shaw,  George  Bernard. ..  .Man  and  Superman  (85)  1.25 

ixStendhal The  Red  and  the  Black  (33) 1.75 

Sterne,  Laurence  . Tristram    Shandy    (53)    Lib.    of 

Eng.  Classics,  2  vols.  each 1.50 

Strindberg,  August.  .The  Confessions  of  a  Fool  (22)  1.35 

Sudermann    Song  of  Songs  (19) 1.40 

Swift,  Jonathan.. . Tale  of  a  Tub   (54),  Bohn  Lib.  1.25 

Thackeray,  W.  M.*Henry    Esmond    (59),    Cranford 

Series    2.00 

Thackeray,  W.  M.*Henry  Esmond,  Oxford  Edition.  .75 

Thackeray,  W.  M.*Henry  Esmond,  India  Paper  ed.      1.75 

Turgeniev   *Virgin     Soil,     trans.     Constance 

Garnett,  2  vols.  each  (47) i.oo 

Turgeniev    Sportsman's  Sketches,  trans.  Con- 
stance Garnett,  2  vols.  each  (48)  i.oo 

Turgeniev   *Lisa,    trans.    Constance    Garnett, 

(49)    i.oo 

Tschekoff The  Sea  Gull  (51)  1.50 

i^Voltaire   Candide  (8)  in  Morley's  Universal 

Library .35 

Whitman,  Walt  .  .*Leaves  of  Grass  (24) 1.25 

l/Wilde,   Oscar Intentions    (87)    Ravenna  Edition      1.25 

v/Wilde,  Oscar  ....The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest 

(88)    1.25 

Wilde,  Oscar  . . . .  De  Prof  undis  (89)  1.25 

An  asterisk  (*)  before  the  title  of  a  book  indicates  that  it  may 
be  obtained  in  Everyman's  Library,  as  well  as  the  edition  named, 
price  40  cts.  in  cloth,  and  80  cts.  in  leather. 

THE  END 


REMINISCENT  OF  DOSTOIEVSKY 

WOOD  AND  STONE 

A  ROMANCE 

By  JOHN  COWPER  POWYS 

I2mo,  722  pages,  $1.50  net 

This  is  an  epoch  marking  novel  by  an  author  "  who  is  dramatic 
as  is  no  other  now  writing." — Oakland  Enquirer. 

In  this  startling  and  original  romance,  the  author  turns  aside 
from  the  track  of  his  contemporaries  and  reverts  to  models 
drawn  from  races  which  have  bolder  and  less  conventional  views 
of  literature  than  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  Following  the  lead  of 
the  Great  Russian  Dostoievsky,  he  proceeds  boldly  to  lay  bare 
the  secret  passions,  the  unacknowledged  motives  and  impulses, 
which  lurk  below  the  placid-seeming  surface  of  ordinary  human 
nature. 

It  has  been  reviewed  favorably  by  all  of  America's  principal 
newspapers,  as  the  following  extracts  from  press  notices  will 
indicate : 

Boston  Transcript:  "  His  mastery  of  language,  his  knowledge  of 
human  impulses,  his  interpretation  of  the  forces  of  nature  and  of  the 
power  of  inanimate  objects  over  human  beings,  all  pronounce  him  a 
writer  of  no  mean  rank.  ...  He  can  express  philosophy  in  terms  of  nar- 
rative without  prostituting  his  art;  he  can  suggest  an  answer  without 
drawing  a  moral;  with  a  clearer  vision  he  could  stand  among  the  masters 
in  literary  achievement." 

Chicago  Tribune:  "Psychologically  speaking,  it  is  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  pieces  of  fiction  ever  written.  ...  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say 
that  a  new  novelist  of  power  has  appeared  upon  the  scene." 

Evening  Sun,  New  York :  ' '  Mr.  Powys,  master  essayist,  comes  for- 
ward with  a  first  novel  which  is  brilliant  in  style,  absorbing  in  plot,  deep 
and  thoughtful  in  its  purpose." 

Philadelphia  Press:  "  It  undoubtedly  will  set  a  new  mark  in  literature 
of  the  contemporary  period.  .  .  .  Mr.  Powys'  style  is  the  style  of  Thomas 
Hardy." 

Philadelphia  Record:  "  Every  page  is  a  joy,  every  chapter  a  fresh 
proof  of  Powys'  genius." 

N.  Y.  Evening  Post:  "  The  best  novel  one  reviewer  has  read  in  a  good 
while." 

New  York  Times:  "Mr.  Powys  is  evidently  a  keen  observer  of  life 
and  responsive  to  all  its  phases." 

N.  Y.  Tribune:      "  A  good  story  well  told." 

N.  Y.  Herald:      "  Here  is  a  novel  worth  reading." 

The  Nation:      "  A  book  of  distinctive  flavor." 

Review  of  Reviews:  "An  exceptional  novel  ...  a  brilliant  intellec- 
tual piece  of  work." 

Philadelphia  North  American:  "A  notable  achievement  in  fictitious 
literature.' ' 

Springfield  Republican:  "  This  is  a  book  which  will  have  more  than 
the  ephemeral  existence  of  the  average  novel." 

New  Haven  Courier  Journal:  "  One  of  the  most  notable  and  im- 
portant novels  that  has  appeared  in  the  last  twelve  months." 

Hartford  Courant:  "  The  book  is  very  interesting,  provokingly  in- 
teresting.' ' 

Democrat  and  Chronicle,  Rochester :  ' '  Among  the  few  works  of  fiction 
tthat  stand  out  in  the  very  forefront  of  this  season's  production." 

G.   ARNOLD    SHAW       Publisher  to  the  University 

Lecturers  Association 

GRAND  CENTRAL  TERMINAL         NEW  YORK 


SHAW'S  FALL  FICTION 

RODMOOR,  A  Romance  by  John  Cowper  Powys. 

I2mo.     About  400  pages.     $1.50  net 

The  New  York  Evening  Post  said  of  Mr.  Powys'  first  novel  "  Wood  and 
Stone  "  that  it  was  "  one  of  the  best  novels  of  the  twelvemonth  "  while  the 
Boston  Transcript  said  that  "  with  a  clearer  vision  he  could  stand  among  the 
masters  in  literary  achievement."  The  Chicago  Tribune  said  of  the  same 
work,  "  Psychologically  speaking,  it  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  pieces 
of  fiction  ever  written."  The  announcement  of  a  second  novel  by  the  same 
brilliant  author  is  therefore  one  of  extraordinary  interest. 

In  this  new  novel,  Mr.  Powys,  while  unhesitatingly  using  to  his  purpose 
those  new  fields  of  psychological  interest  opened  up  for  us  by  recent  Rus- 
sian writers,  reverts,  in  the  general  style  and  content  of  his  story,  to  that 
more  idealistic,  more  simple  mood,  which  we  associate  with  such  great  roman- 
ticists as  Emily  Bronte  and  Victor  Hugo. 

QUAKER-BORN,  A  Romance  of  the  Great  War,  by  Ian 
Campbell  Hannah. 

I2mo.     About  320  pages.     $1.35  net 

While  this  is  Dr.  Hannah's  first  novel,  it  is  his  eighth  published  work;  he 
thus  brings  to  bear  the  skill  of  the  literary  craftsman  upon  his  dramatic 
theme  of  the  Quakers'  conscientious  objections  to  war.  To  fight  or  not  to  fight 
is  the  problem  that  confronted  Edward  Alexander  when  he  witnessed  the 
bombardment  of  Scarborough;  he  decided  as  an  Englishman,  not  as  a  Quaker 
—  but,  the  next  day  a  telegram  came  summoning  him  to  the  death-bed  of 
his  mother,  who  demanded  as  her  dying  wish  that  he  should  not  abandon  the 
principles  of  the  Friends.  He  had  the  strength  to  reverse  his  decision  but 
neither  his  fiancee  nor  his  best  Cambridge  friend  could  understand.  How 
he  nearly  lost  the  former  while  saving  the  life  of  the  latter  on  the  battle 
field  in  Flanders  is  the  basis  of  an  absorbing  plot  which  holds  the  interest 
from  beginning  to  end  of  this  thrilling  story  of  young  love.  An  admirable 
book  recommended  especially  to  those  who  detest  alike  the  mawkish  sentiment 
of  the  "  best-seller  "  and  the  revolting  realistic  novels  of  our  day. 

THE  CHILD  OF  THE  MOAT,  A  Story  of  1550,  by  I.  B. 
Stoughton  Holborn. 

izmo.     About  320  pages.     $1.25  net 

This  is  a  book  for  girls  of  from  13  to  16  written  for  a  child  rescued  from 
the  Lusitania.  Many  complain  that  girls'  books  are  too  tame  and  prefer 
those  written  for  boys.  Mr.  Holborn  therefore  promised  to  write  a  girls' 
book  with  as  much  adventure  as  Stevenson's  "  Treasure  Island."  He  has 
succeeded  and  the  hair-breadth  escapes  of  the  heroine  should  satisfy  the  most 
exacting.  The  scene  is  laid  in  the  stirring  times  of  the  Reformation  and 
those  who  know  the  author  as  an  archaeological  lecturer  will  recognize  his 
bent  in  several  picturesque  touches,  such  as  the  striking  dressing  scene  be- 
fore the  heroine  s  birthday-party.  The  book  is  a  remarkable  contribution  to 
children's  literature  and  suggests  a  raising  of  the  standard  if  more  were 
written  by  men  of  learning  and  scholarship  who  are  true  child-lovers.  After 
all  was  not  "  Alice  in  Wonderland  "  written  by  an  erudite  Oxford  don  and 
everyone  who  has  read  the  present  author's  volume  of  poems  "  Children  of 
Fancy  "  will  know  him  as  a  lover  of  children. 

G.   ARNOLD    SHAW       Publisher  to  the  University 

Lecturers  Association 

GRAND  CENTRAL  TERMINAL         NEW  YORK 


Recommended  by  the  A.  L.  A.  Booklist 

Adopted  for  required  reading  by  the  Pittsburgh 
Teachers  Reading  Circle 

VISIONS  AND  REVISIONS 

A  BOOK  OF  LITERARY  DEVOTIONS 
By  JOHN  COWPER  POWYS 

8vo,  298  pp.    Half  White  Cloth  with  Blue  Fabriano  Paper  Sides, 

$2.00  net 

This  volume  of  essays  on  Great  Writers  by  the  well-known 
lecturer  was  the  first  of  a  series  of  three  books  with  the  same 
purpose  as  the  author's  brilliant  lectures;  namely,  to  enable  one 
to  discriminate  between  the  great  and  the  mediocre  in  ancient 
and  modern  literature :  the  other  two  books  being  "  One  Hundred 
Best  Books  "  and  "  Suspended  Judgments." 

Within  a  year  of  its  publication,  four  editions  of  "Visions 
and  Revisions"  were  printed  —  an  extraordinary  record  con- 
sidering that  it  was  only  the  second  book  issued  by  a  new  pub- 
lisher. The  value  of  the  book  to  the  student  and  its  interest 
for  the  general  reader  are  guaranteed  by  the  international  fame 
of  the  author  as  an  interpreter  of  great  literature  and  by  the 
enthusiastic  reviews  it  received  from  the  American  Press. 

Keview  of  Eeviews,  New  York:  "  Seventeen  essays  .  .  .  remarkable 
for  the  omission  of  all  that  is  tedious  and  cumbersome  in  literary  ap- 
preciations, such  as  pedantry,  muckraking,  theorizing,  and,  in  particular, 
constructive  criticism." 

Book  News  Monthly,  Philadelphia :  ' '  Not  one  line  in  the  entire  book 
that  is  not  tense  with  thought  and  feeling.  >  With  all  readers  who  crave 
mental  stimulation  .  .  .  '  Visions  and  Revisions  '  is  sure  of  a  great  and 
enthusiastic  appreciation." 

The  Nation  and  the  Evening  Post,  New  York:  "  Their  imagery  is 
bright,  clear  and  frequently  picturesque.  The  rhythm  falls  with  a  pleas- 
ing cadence  on  the  ear." 

Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle:  "A  volume  of  singularly  acute  and  readable 
literary  criticism." 

Chicago  Herald:  "  An  essayist  at  once  scholarly,  human  and  charm- 
ing is  John  Cowper  Powys.  .  .  .  Almost  every  page  carries  some  arresting 
thought,  quaintly  appealing  phrase,  or  picture  spelling  passage." 

Reedy 's  Mirror,  St.  Louis:  "  Powys  keeps  you  wide  awake  in  the 
reading  because  he's  thinking  and  writing  from  the  standpoint  of  life, 
not  of  theory  or  system.  Powys  has  a  system  but  it  is  hardly  a  system. 
It  is  a  sort  of  surrender  to  the  revelation  each  writer  has  to  make." 

Kansas  City  Star:  "John  Cowper  Powys'  essays  are  wonderfully  il- 
luminating. .  .  .  Mr.  Powys  writes  in  at  least  a  semblance  of  the  Grand 
Style." 

"  Visions  and  Revisions  "  contains  the  following  essays :  — 
Rabelais  Dickens  Thomas  Hardy 

Dante  Goethe  Walter  Pater 

Shakespeare  Matthew  Arnold         Dostoievsky 

El  Greco  Shelley  Edgar  Allan  Foe 

Milton  Keats  Walt  Whitman 

Charles  Lamb  Nietzsche  Conclusion 

G.  ARNOLD  SHAW 

GRAND  CENTRAL  TERMINAL         NEW  YORK 


SUSPENDED    JUDGMENTS 

ESSAYS  ON  BOOKS  AND  SENSATIONS 

BY  JOHN  COWPER  POWYS 

8vo.  about  400  pages.    Half  cloth  with  blue  Fabriane  paper 

sides    $2.00  net 

The  Book  News  Monthly  said  of  "  Visions  and  Revisions " : 

"  Not  one  line  in  the  entire  book  that  is  not  tense  with  thought 
and  feeling." 

The  author  of  "  Visions  and  Revisions  "  says  of  this  new  book 
of  essays: 

"  In  '  Suspended  Judgments '  I  have  sought  to  express  with 
more  deliberation  and  in  a  less  spasmodic  manner  than  in  'Vi- 
sions,' the  various  after-thoughts  and  reactions  both  intellectual 
and  sensational  which  have  been  produced  in  me,  in  recent 
years,  by  the  re-reading  of  my  favorite  writers.  I  have  tried 
to  capture  what  might  be  called  the  '  psychic  residuum  *  of  earlier 
fleeting  impressions  and  I  have  tried  to  turn  this  emotional  after- 
math into  a  permanent  contribution  —  at  any  rate  for  those  of 
similar  temperament  —  to  the  psychology  of  literary  apprecia- 
tion. 

"  To  the  purely  critical  essays  in  this  volume  I  have  added  a 
certain  number  of  others  dealing  with  what,  in  popular  parlance, 
are  called  'general  topics,'  but  what  in  reality  are  always  —  in 
the  most  extreme  sense  of  that  word  —  personal  to  the  mind 
reacting  from  them.  I  have  called  the  book  *  Suspended  Judg- 
ments '  because  while  one  lives,  one  grows,  and  while  one  grows, 
one  waits  and  expects." 

SUSPENDED  JUDGMENTS  CONTAINS  THESE  ESSAYS: 

THE  ART  OF  DISCRIMINATION  IN  LITERATURE 

MONTAIGNE  EMILY  BRONTE 

PASCAL  JOSEPH  CONRAD 

VOLTAIRE  HENRY  JAMES 

ROUSSEAU  OSCAR  WILDE 

BALZAC  AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 

VICTOR  HUGO  

DE  MAUPASSANT  FRIENDS 

ANATOLE  FRANCE  RELIGION 

PAUL  VERLAINE  LOVE 

REMY  DE  GOURMONT  CITIES 

WILLIAM  BLAKE  MORALITY 

BYRON  EDUCATION 

G.  ARNOLD  SHAW 

GRAND  CENTRAL  TERMINAL         NEW  YORK 


"Rhymes  or  Real  Poems?"—  Boston  Globe 

WOLF'S  -  BANE 

RHYMES  BY  JOHN  COWPER  POWYS 

8vo,  120  pages,  $1.25  net 

In  these  remarkable  poems  Mr.  Powys  strikes  a  new  and 
startlingly  unfamiliar  note;  their  interest  lies  in  the  fact  that 
they  are  the  unaffected  outcries  and  protests  of  a  soul  in  exile, 
and  their  originality  is  to  be  found  in  that  they  sweep  aside 
all  facile  and  commonplace  consolations  and  give  expression 
to  the  natural  and  incurable  sadness  of  the  heart  of  man. 

New  York  Evening  Post  says:  "As  regards  what  Mr.  Powys 
modestly  calls  his  '  rhymes,'  we  hesitate  to  say  how  many  years  it  is 
necessary  to  go  back  in  order  to  find  their  equals  in  sheer  poetic  orig- 
inality." 

Book  News  Monthly  says:  "Such  poems  as  those  are  worthy  of  a 
permanent  existence  in  literature.' ' 

Kansas  City  Star  says :  "  It  is  unmistakably  verse  of  lasting 
quality.' ' 

THE  WAR  AND  CULTURE 

An  Answer  to  Professor  Musterberg 

By  JOHN  COWPER  POWYS 

I2mo,  113  pages,  60  cents 

Mr.  Powys  says  of  this  book  that  he  has  sought  to  correct 
that  plausible  and  superficial  view  of  the  Russian  people  as 
"  the  half-civilised  legions  to  whom  we  have  taught  killing  by 
machinery " —  a  view  to  which  even  so  independent  a  thinker 
as  George  Bernard  Shaw  appears  to  have  fallen  a  victim. 

The  Nation  says :  — "  It  is  more  weighty  than  many  of  the 
more  pretentious  treatises  on  the  subject." 

The  Soliloquy  of  a  Hermit 

By  THEODORE  FRANCIS  POWYS 

i2mo,  144  pages,  $1.00 

A  profoundly  original  interpretation  of  life  by  the  great  lec- 
turer's hermit  brother  of  which  the  Dial,  Chicago  says:  "Truly 
a  satirist  and  humorist  of  a  different  kidney  from  the  ordinary 
sort  is  this  companionable  hermit.  There  is  many  a  chuckle 
in  his  little  book." 

G.  ARNOLD  SHAW 

GRAND  CENTRAL  TERMINAL         NEW  YORK 


BOOKS  BY  I.  B.  STOUGHTON  HOLBORN 

CHILDREN  OF  FANCY 

Second  Edition,  256  pages,  $2.00  net 

This  volume  has  a  special  claim  to  attention  as  the  poet  was 
invited  to  read  these  poems  at  Oxford  University  at  the  1915 
Summer  Meeting.  The  Oxford  Chronicle  in  a  long  account  "  of 
one  of  the  greatest  pleasures  provided  for  the  Meeting,"  re- 
marked that  "the  ideal  is  perfectly  attained  when  the  poet  can 
recite  his  own  poems  with  the  artistry  with  which  Mr.  Holborn 
introduced  to  his  audience  his  charming  '  Children  of  Fancy.'  " 
Mr.  Holborn  swam  with  part  of  the  MSS.  from  the  Lusitania, 
and  the  Edinburgh  Evening  News  says  that  "he  has  commemo- 
rated the  tragedy  in  lines  of  sublime  pathos." 

American  Review  of  Reviews  says:  "  Mr.  Holm's  poetry  is  delicate, 
musical,  rhapsodic;  often  shaped  to  enfold  classical  themes,  always  of 
proportioned  comeliness,  filled  with  a  vague  haunting  of  indefinable  beauty 
that  can  never  be  embraced  in.  words.  It  is  a  book  of  poetry  for  poets; 
one  can  hardly  say  more." 

Adopted  for  Required  Reading  by  the  Pittsburgh  Teachers 
Reading  Circle 

The  Need  for  c/4.rt  in  Life 

Cloth,  116  pp.,  75  cents  net 

The  object  of  Mr.  Holborn's  little  book  is  to  show  that  the 
peculiar  evil  of  the  present  day  is  a  lack  of  the  proper  love  and 
appreciation  of  Art  and  Beauty.  Our  social  and  political  prob- 
lems which  we  attempt  to  tackle  on  scientific  and  moral  lines 
can  never  be  righted  in  that  way,  as  we  have  not  made  a  scientif- 
ically correct  diagnosis  of  the  disease. 

He  makes  a  careful  analytical  survey  of  the  three  great 
epochs  in  our  past  civilization  and  clearly  demonstrates  that 
wherever  one  of  the  fundamentals  of  man's  existence  is  want- 
ing the  man  as  a  whole  must  fail. 

It  makes  no  difference  whether  the  lack  be  on  the  intellectual, 
artistic  or  moral  side  —  the  result  is  equally  disastrous  to  the 
complete  man. 

The  Boston  Transcript  says  :  '  '  This  is  one  of  the  greatest  little  books 
of  the  age.  If  it  is  not  epoch-making,  it  should  be.  It  treats  in  charm- 
ing style  and  convincing  manner  a  theme  of  vital  and  universal  interest. 
The  thoughtful  man  who  reads  it  will  feel  that  a  new  classic  has  been 
added  to  the  world's  literature." 

ARCHITECTURES  OF  EUROPEAN 
RELIGIONS 

Blue  Buckram,  Gold  stamping,  264  pp.,  $2.00  net 

G.  ARNOLD  SHAW 


GRAND  CENTRAL  TERMINAL  NEW  YORK 


Recommended  by  the  A.  L.  A.  Booklist 

Specially  suitable  for  Schools  and  Colleges 

ARMS  AND  THE  MAP 

A  STUDY  IN  NATIONALITIES  AND  FRONTIERS 
By  IAN  CAMPBELL  HANNAH,  M.A.,  D.C.L. 

I2mo,  256  pages,  $1.25  net 

This  work,  which  has  had  a  large  sale  in  England,  will  be  in- 
valuable when  the  terms  of  peace  begin  to  be  seriously  dis- 
cussed. Every  European  people  is  reviewed  and  the  evolution 
of  the  different  nationalities  is  carefully  explained.  Particular 
reference  is  made  to  the  so-called  "  Irredentist "  lands,  whose 
people  want  to  be  under  a  different  flag  from  that  under  which 
they  live. 

The  colonizing  methods  of  all  the  nations  are  dealt  with,  and 
especially  the  place  in  the  sun  that  Germany  hasn't  got. 

New  York  Times  says:  "  Such  &  volume  as  this  will  undoubtedly  be 
of  value  in  presenting  .  .  .  facts  of  great  importance  in  a  brief  and  in- 
teresting fashion." 

Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle  says:  "It  is  hard  to  find  a  man  who  presents 
his  arguments  so  broad-mindedly  as  Dr.  Hannah.  His  spirit  is  that  of  a 
catholic  scholar  striving  earnestly  to  find  the  truth  and  present  it 
sympathetically.' ' 

Philadelphia  North  American  says :  "  It  is  in  no  sense  history,  but 
rather  a  preparatory  effort  to  mark  broadly  the  outlines  of  any  future 

Seace  settlement  that  would  have  even  a  fighting  chance  of  permanency, 
nly  in  perusing  a  critical  study  of  this  character  can  the  vast  problems 
of  post-bellum  imminence  be  fully  apprehended." 

Philadelphia  Press  says:  "  His  work  is  immensely  readable  and  par- 
ticularly interesting  at  this  time  and  will  throw  much  fresh  light  on  the 
situation.' ' 

OTHER  BOOKS  BY  IAN  C.  HANNAH 

Eastern  Asia,  A  History   $2.50 

Capitals  of  the  Northlands  (A  tale  of  ten  cities)   2.00 

The  Berwick  and  Lothian  Coast  (in  the  County  Coast  Series)    2.00 

The  Heart  of  East  Anglia  (A  History  of  Norwich) 2.00 

Some  Irish  Religious  Houses  (Reprinted  from  the  Archa- 

ological  Journal)    5°c 

Irish  Cathedrals  (Reprinted  from  the  Archaological  Journal     5oc 

G     ARNOLD    SHAW       Publisher  to  the  University 

Lecturers  Association 

GRAND  CENTRAL  TERMINAL         NEW  YORK 


